Great quote:

I have heard self-righteous Christians proclaim, “Alcohol has never touched my lips” when it is also obvious that a treadmill has never touched their legs.

- Perry Noble

This rocks, a web site all about sticking the weirdest things in a blender and seeing what happens. Check out the iPod one.

Here are a few of my thoughts on predestination and free will. Beware: This is pretty theoretical, intense stuff and could easily bore you. I just wanted to jot these thoughts down and see if anyone is interested in talking this through, since I'm boring my wife to tears about this by now... ;-)

Naturally, this is all assuming God exists and the Bible is God's revealed truth, etc. etc.

• Our choices are determined or caused by
• Our "being", i.e. who we are
• Our circumstances
• In other words, if someone took a time machine and without influencing anything, watched me make a decision over and over again, it seems logical that I would always make the same decision. Why? Because I would always be the same person, and the circumstances would always be the same.
  
• Put differently: Everything but God has a cause, and this includes any decisions I make with my will - my decisions are caused by who I am, and by the circumstances I am in - both of which themselves have causes.
• If I follow the chain of cause and effect back, it all ends up with God the Creator. God is the one and only Uncaused Cause.
  
• So by creating with omniscience, that is, by creating while knowing the outcome, God thereby predestined.
• Put differently: Omniscience + Omnipotence = Predestination
  
• So what happens with free will? I'd say it depends on your definition of "free"...
• Our will is free from coercion or determination by God: God does not control us or our will like you might control a robot. When I make a decision, it is MY decision alone. I can choose what I want and I alone will be held responsible for my choices. God can and will not be held responsible for the choices I make.
• Our will is not free or independent of our being, of who we are. In other words, I (by definition!) can and will not make choices that are somehow detached from who I am.
• So how can God hold us responsible if He created us? Well, though it's a tough passage, check out Romans 9 with an open mind. I'd summarize Paul's thoughts there by saying that the act of creation itself is never a negative thing - simply because God chooses to create someone though He knows full well how that person will decide does not make it God's responsibility when His creation turns against him.
• God could have "picked and chosen" who He created so that only those people were created who would accept Him. Why didn't He? Good question, I don't know, but I like Piper's take on it which is basically that certain facets of God's character, e.g. His mercy, His wrath, the unconditionality of His love, would never have been able to have been displayed if He had never created "objects of wrath" like it says in Romans 9.
• So all in all: It's really a tough issue, but I think it's funny how I can tend to shy away from the topic mainly because I just don't like the implications, but not because I don't think that thinking about the topic wouldn't reveal more of who God is to me.

I'd LOVE dialog on this topic, please post comments or write me emails on this.

Resources:
Wikipedia article on Free Will
Free Will and Responsibility
Are There Two Wills in God? (John Piper)
Newcomb's Paradox

WWII as a Real-Time Strategy Game, found in the comments on Slashdot Games:

Germany: We will pwn j00
France: ZOMG ZERG *France has disconnected from server*
UK: You too can experience your finest hour with all herbal enlargement pills
Germany: UK is just an F'ing spambot, we'll invade Russia

.
Russia: No fair Germany, we had a deal!
Germany: WTF Russia is turtling!!!
Japan: All ur base in Asia r belong to us
USA: OMG Japan is so f***ing ninja! I was AFK
Russia: This sucks, I have a spambot and AFKer on my team
US: Don't worry I was macro building up my production while AFK
UK: Sorry about that spam, I was letting my little bro play
Russia: Bout F***ing time you showed up
Germany: Italy, are you going to do anything productive?!
Italy:*Italy has disconnected from the server* *Italy has joined the game* *Italy has joined the Allies*
Germany: We're screwed *Germany has disconnected from the server*
US: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds."
Japan: ZOMG we gotz nuked *Japan has disconnected from the server*

The last few weeks I've dived into the whole predestination/free will/sovereignty/theodicy question, partly because of thoughts I had while preparing a teaching on Ephesians 1:1-14, but also after realizing how strongly Driscoll and Piper, whom I both respect highly, are 5-point Calvinists.

I'm planning on writing up a longer post on this, just wanted to point anyone who's interested to a great article which for me finally gave a feeling of "now I get it!" on the whole topic by first of all defining "free will" in the terms of the question "Would the exact same person in the exact same situation have been able to decide differently than they did?". Either way you answer that question, you can run into logical problems. I really like the slant the writer of the article takes.

Anyways, check it out here and tell me what you think.

Our church is currently in the process of moving out of our old building in Immanuelkirchstr. to a new place one block away.

The new place is less than half the price of what we're paying for the old place, has a more "open" feeling to it, is on the ground floor rather than the attic (which means it's more accessible and cooler in hot summers), and is on two floors which is nice for storage space, etc. So I am really going through mixed emotions this week. One emotion is definitely excitement about the new place.

Another emotion is a tangible sadness. There are so many moving memories I have with this old place. Here are just a few (in no particular order)...

• Jamming "Invitacion" with Zakcq, Carlos, Anna, and Claudia
• Strings breaking
  
• Seeing Suzanne van Dyck worship with all her heart
• Mike dancing in the back during worship
• John van Dyck sharing on D-Day
• Mike's "memorial rocks"
  
• Our Easter service with the cross
• Saying goodbye to Zakcq and Jessica
• Saying goodbye to the Mansfields
• Saying goodbye to the Johnsons
• Saying goodbye...
• Saying goodbye again...
  
• Our crisis weekend with Joe Dunn and others, deciding what to do without a pastor in town.
• Mark Darling kicking my butt into gear
  
• Mark Bowen touching my heart
• Greg Van Nada's listening eyes
  
• Mike's goodbye party
• World Cup fever - Zidane losing it
  
• Dave Mansfield doing sound
• Reese, Gabe, Ariana, Lucas
• Major cleaning with Flo
• The team signature wall
• Dave Lennander crying during his first visit
• Joshua being dedicated
• Sarah being dedicated
• Uwe & Jenny's wedding
  
• Jenny's testimony
• Ronja's testimony
• Jamming "All Bow Down" with Daniel, John Hudson, Ronja, and Johannes
• Last weekend's final service at the old place, with story after story of people sharing how God has changed their lives using Rock Berlin...looking forward to what God will continue to do!
  

(inspired by Todd's goodbye list for their old place - his is much more poetic ;-)

Is Christianity Good for the World?

Just wanted to point you all to a wonderfully pointed debate between two very intelligent people on the above question, one of them debating from a Christian perspective (Douglas Wilson), the other from an atheist perspective (Christopher Hitchens).

Some really great stuff in there. Props to Hitchens for allowing the debate to be hosted on Christianity Today of all places. :-)

From Hitchens:

If hymns and psalms were sung to sanctify slavery—just to take a recent example—and then sung by abolitionists, then surely the non-fanatical explanation is that morality requires no supernatural sanction? Every Christian church has had to make some apology for its role in the Crusades, slavery, anti-Semitism, and much else. I do not think that such humility discredits faith as such, because I tend to think that faith is a problem to begin with, but I do think that humility will lead to the necessary conclusion that religion is man-made.

From Wilson:

Now allow me the privilege of pointing out the structure of your argument here. If a professor takes credit for the student who mastered the material, aced his finals, and went on to a career that was a benefit to himself and the university he graduated from, the professor must (fairness dictates) be upbraided for the dope-smoking slacker that he kicked out of class in the second week. They were both formally enrolled, is that not correct? They were both students, were they not?

Find the debate here.

I watched this at work so I didn't have any sound - but this might actually be funnier without sound. Unbelievable that this actually seems to be real.

Google's Spellchecker is a sexist pig

When you search for "She invented", it says "Did you mean he invented?"

Human beings are inherently...?

This is definitely the scariest true story I have heard in a very, very long time.

Girls 'felt right' killing friend

The two 17-year-olds, who cannot be named, stuffed a chemical-soaked cloth into the mouth of Eliza Jane Davis, 15, and throttled her with wire after waking up on a sleepover and deciding neither would feel bad about killing someone. [...] The two teenagers, then aged 16, stayed in one room and decided to kill Davis the next day during a morning chat. The girl who carried out the strangling told police she watched calmly as the emotions on her friend's face shifted from anger to terror as she realized they intended to kill her.

Holy. Crap.

I thought this was funny, this was overheard in a store somewhere. Yeah, my humor is not exactly the "normal" type. But that's why you think I'm so funny, right? ... Right?

Children Are Malicious Little Tape Recorders

Little boy after a loud crash: You broke it! I'm very upset with you -- very upset! Mommy broke the lamp! She's a bad girl!

via Overheard in the Office, May 8, 2007

Velvet Elvis - Part Two

I now have finished chapter one of Velvet Elvis and there's so much I could write. I simply don't have the time to do a big polished post, so I'll just kind of give a stream of thoughts and see if anything snags attention and maybe a dialogue. Please freely post comments!

• In my opinion, the "postmodern", "emergent"...thing...can often be mainly understood solely as a reaction against modernism. Hence the word "postmodern" - if there wasn't modernism, post-modernism could not exist!
  
  
  
  
• Now, that's not a bad thing in and of itself - I'd agree that "modern" Christianity has a bunch of weaknesses which often result from one-sided, reductionist thinking. The problem is that post-modernity then can quickly react to those weaknesses by a counter-weakness, taking the opposite of the weakness to an extreme, thereby creating a new problem! Here are a couple of examples which I find in chapter one:
  
  
  
  
• Modernity tends to value answers more than questions: I remember hearing about one pastor who swore to himself he'd never be stumped by the same question twice. What that implies is that questions exist solely to be answered, and if you don't have an answer to a question, that somehow is a negative thing which needs to be remedied.
  
  However, questions are NOT a negative thing! See for example the fact that some of Jesus' last words were "WHY have you forsaken me?" Jesus himself is asking a question without receiving an answer. I think Velvet Elvis brings this fact out wonderfully in chapter 1.
  
  But the problem I see in the postmodern, emergent reaction to that weakness is the tendency to do precisely the opposite: Suddenly, questions are valued above answers, and having doubts becomes something positive. Some of the remarks in Velvet Elvis go in this direction. "What if tomorrow someone dug up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry - would your faith fall apart?" Planting doubts is NOT my definition of asking healthy and honest questions.
  
  What I wish is that moderns would learn from post-moderns, and vice versa, and we'd hold questions and answers in tension. That we'd keep the line drawn between questions (good) and doubts (bad) - very often, Jesus says "Do not doubt". James says we "must not doubt". BUT Jude 22 says "Be merciful to those who doubt." Can't we take all those facts and hold them in a healthy paradoxical tension?
  
  
  
  
• Modernity tends to value doctrines above actual living: I remember a "Fact, Faith, Feeling" train - doctrinal fact needs to lead the way, our faith needs to be connected to that fact, and our feelings, a little red caboose, will follow...sometimes. ;) Now I agree with that image, but I think it's easy to then go and define faith as simply "believing" said doctrine. But that's not enough. True faith means living out the doctrine. So often faith was seen in "modern" Christianity as an all-in-your-head deal of "Yeah, I choose to believe in my head that God loves the world.", but never living it out practically, which is what "true" faith is.
  
  However, again, I see the postmodern reaction to this weakness is to do the opposite. Suddenly, doctrines of truth are no longer the foundation of our faith, but rather it's all about whether or not we "live in the way of Jesus", which is how Bell defines what Christianity is about. After planting some pretty intense seeds of doubt about the virgin birth, he asks that "if" the virgin birth was drawn into question, "Could a person still love God? Could you still be a Christian? Is the way of Jesus still the best possible way to live?" In other words - as long as you live in the way of Jesus, you're OK - "the doctrines are simply the springs" that help you jump higher on your "trampoline", as he puts it. And he ends with the pointed question "If the whole faith fails apart when we reexamine it and rethink one spring, then it wasn’t that strong in the first place, was it?"
  
  Again, I wish for a healthy tension of these two thoughts, not taking it to the extreme either way - I feel Bell is definitely taking it to the extreme by drawing the virgin birth into question. And it's not a healthy "Did the virgin birth happen?", it's a dangerous planting of doubts by asking "What IF the virgin birth DIDN'T happen?"
  
  Sorry, but certain doctrines are FAR more than a single spring in my trampoline. They're the frame, the ground on which my trampoline stands, the legs of my trampoline.
  
  Those certain doctrines include the virgin birth, the Trinity (both of which are drawn into question by Bell, though he finds the easy way out by saying "...but I'm not saying it's not true!"), the resurrection, the substitutionary death of Christ.
  
  
  
  I think Paul answered the question of "Could you still be a Christian if the doctrine of the resurrection needed to be 'rethought'?" quite nicely in 1 Corinthians 15. And I'll close with that, 'cause this is getting long:
  
  

  "And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is useless."
  
  - 1 Corinthians 15:17
  
  

Happy Birthday, Joshua!

Joshua turns 2 today. We're looking forward to a cool party tonight with all his friends and babysitters coming over. :)

Have I said that being a Dad just frickin' rocks? No? Well, it does!

For a random "wow" moment, click here.

Oh boy. There's currently a court case to give "person" status to...a monkey, so it can receive personal donations.

"If we can get Hiasl declared a person, he would have the right to own property. Then, if people wanted to donate something to him, he'd have the right to receive it," said Theuer, who has vowed if necessary to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.

Emphasis mine. Yeah. My thought exactly.

Velvet Elvis - Part One

Hi all, after reading Mike's first thoughts on Velvet Elvis, I finally got around to ordering it and now I've started reading it. Mike asked if I'd be interested in doing a "blog dialogue" on it, and I think that'd be fun. This whole thing is going to be geared toward us processing our thoughts on the book together. But hey, who knows, add my 3 readers to his 7, and we could be in double digit readership, bay-bee! ;-)



Here are my initial thoughts after reading the cover back and the introduction chapter. And because people like lists (what, you don't?), I'm doing it in list form.

• I really appreciate his note on the back of the cover: "Don't swallow [this book] uncritically. Think about it. Wrestle with it." I think that line's exactly what should have been on the back of "New Kind of Christian", if you ask me. And this is exactly why Mike and I are starting this dialogue.
  
  
• One of his main points to start the book off is
  
  

  I embrace the need to keep [...] reforming. By this I do not mean cosmetic, superficial changes like better lights and music, sharper graphics, and new methods with easy-to-follow steps. I mean theology: the beliefs about God, Jesus, the Bible, salvation, the future. We must keep reforming the way the Christian faith is defined, lived, and explained.
  
  

  - page 12

  OK, this is both a dangerous point and yet a good point at the same time, depending on how you understand his words. And this ambiguity is precisely what I am hoping will not happen all too often in this book. This statement is ambiguous enough to be understood to mean "I embrace the need to reform my beliefs of whether the Bible is God's word, whether Jesus was bodily resurrected, etc., etc." Sorry, but that is a dangerous direction to head in. And to be honest, I don't think that's what he means.
  
  But, if you understand the sentence to mean "I embrace the need to take fresh looks at ancient truths, and to be willing to change how I live out my faith if I recognize that a part of my 'faith' is actually only my culture.", then it's great and I fully agree.
• Something practical I've recognized over the past few years is how I've changed in my missiology because of precisely this healthy side of "reforming". Being as much as possible a part of the culture around me, not forming a competing culture. Allowing unbelievers to be a part of our church as much as possible, to feel accepted and loved, and not that we set up a bunch of hoops for them to jump through so that they can be a part. I realized I had kind of had that mentality. That's not because I was somehow taught something wrong before or anything (this is definitely not at all a dissing of my "home church" where I started from!), rather it's because I had allowed my Christianity to actually become my culture, which, to put it bluntly, isn't Biblical. BTW, one book that really put into words what I mean is Radical Reformission by Mark Driscoll.
• Now, note the final words of the introductory chapter:
  
  

  If it is true, then it isn't new.
  
  I am learning that what seems brand new is often the discovery of something that's been there all along - it just got lost somewhere and it needs to be picked up, dusted off, and reclaimed.
  
  

  - page 14

  
  
  
  That's precisely the way that ambiguous statement from above should be understood. I really agree with this, this really resonates with me. It isn't truth that somehow is changing or isn't absolute, it's our view as Christians of those truths that over and over again throughout history has to be recalibrated.