When I was in high school, a buddy and I went to a concert a couple of hours out of town. We skipped school to do it. I don't remember if we had had permission from our parents or not. Though, we must have, because we got home at like 2 am. Denison Marrs played this song, they had me entranced:
Around 3:13-3:16 in the song, the singer asked, "what was it that you [Jesus] wrote in the sand?"
Stump's volume The God of the Bible and the God of the Philosophers deals with a question that has vexed many for centuries: is the God argued for by philosophical theologians the same being in the pages of Scripture. Atheists will often answer: no. Some Calvinists also answer: no. And open theists frequently say no.
When asked why he associated with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus answered:
And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” The healthy do not need the doctor, the sick do. Go and learn about this, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." (Matthew 9:11-13)
The problem with this is that Mark’s gospel alludes to and presupposes Jesus’ divinity by what it makes plain throughout its pages. The problem is that these assumptions only surface by means of certain allusions. In other words, Mark believes in Jesus’ divinity, but he only expresses this by “telling it slant.”[1]
Nicholas Taleb helps us understand why tradition is helpful::
Consider the role of heuristic (rule-of-thumb) knowledge embedded in traditions. Simply, just as evolution operates on individuals, so does it act on these tacit, unexplainable rules of thumb transmitted through generations— what Karl Popper has called evolutionary epistemology. But let me change Popper’s idea ever so slightly (actually quite a bit): my take is that this evolution is not a competition between ideas, but between humans and systems based on such ideas. An idea does not survive because it is better than the competition, but rather because the person who holds it has survived! Accordingly, wisdom you learn from your grandmother should be vastly superior (empirically, hence scientifically) to what you get from a class in business school (and, of course, considerably cheaper). My sadness is that we have been moving farther and farther away from grandmothers.Now, in Christianity tradition includes, but is not limited to Scripture. The idea is that Scripture is the measuring rod against which other traditions are judged. Scripture takes pride of place whether the church is examining practices, beliefs, or ways of speaking about God. But this does not mean that traditions are always wrong.Taleb, Nassim Nicholas (2012-11-27). Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Kindle Locations 3841-3847). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
You know the saying, “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
But at its most basic level, power is “being able to do what you want.” Therefore it is no different from strength, except that its associations transcend the athletic capacities of the physical body. And while we often want what is evil, this is not always so. Power is morally neutral in this sense.
John Piper (the ideas guy behind Desiring God) connects the heart in Scripture with the sentiments. When he does this, his apparent background in romantic thought and in “authenticity thinking” comes through. Another author, like Piper, essentially equates hypocrisy with doing something you don’t feel like at the moment:
What can we do when our hearts feel nothing?What we must not do is think feelings are optional — and just go through the motions, acting as if we are feeling what we are saying and singing.
For the Christian, there is a right and wrong way to love yourself or your own life. One can disqualify you from being a disciple of Christ:
If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26)