Geoff's Miscellany

One of the most startling elements of modern evangelical academia is how disdainful many of them are of the average parishioner. I sensed this happening to me in seminary and once I realized it, I started to see it in books. Then Twitter was invented and I started following more of these scholars to whom I looked for advice about Biblical interpretation and the like, and I discovered the outright disgust with undergraduate students displayed by those with doctorates, the foul modes of speech they used to talk about those they disagreed with, and the way they made fun of what I would call normal people. I have a social science hypothesis:

In Paul’s letter to the Philippians he passes over the intellectual difficulty of human and divine agency in spiritual growth with no effort to resolve the apparent contradiction contained in his statement:

...with fear and trembling, work to acquire your own salvation; for God is the one working in you both to will and to work his good pleasure. (Philippians 2:12b-13)

12 Not that I have already received it [the resurrection] or have been made perfect, but I seek to make it [perfection] my own because Christ has made me his own. 13 Brothers, I do not consider myself to have made it [perfection] my own. But I do one thing: forgetting what lies before me I strain forward 14 in accordance with the goal I seek the goal of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 15 Therefore, if anybody has been made perfect, let us think this way; and if anybody differs in thought, God will reveal even this. 16 Only, let us hold firm to what we’ve already attained. (Philippians 3:12-16)

1. Admit your imperfection.
2. [Implied] Have a vision for your life as perfectly Christlike.
3. Seek to make that perfection your own.
4. Leave your imperfections behind you rather than dwelling upon the. (Paul struggled with this, he mentions his persecution of the nascent just earlier in the letter)
5. Strain for the perfection of Christian character. In 3:11, Paul says "if somehow" or "if by any means." In other words, do what it takes to be like Christ. And since the metaphor is of running, think of "any means" like the any means of running away from danger and toward safety.*
6. Not only should the appeal of the good life in Christ motivate us, but also the 'prize' or the rewards God offers to Christians should motivate us as well.
7. Don't get resentful of people who don't get it.
8. Hold fast to what you've attained. Don't go backwards...but with step one in mind, don't insist that where you are is perfect either. Anybody can be wrong. Sometimes your understanding of life in Christ is what needs to change before you can change.

A favorite song of many evangelical Christians repeats the refrain:

“I am a friend of God, he calls me, ‘Friend.’”

But what does it mean to be friend of God, or more specifically, of Jesus Christ? The answer to the question leads me to hum that song line rather than proclaim it for fear of presumption.

To be Jesus’ friend is something that he decides based upon the state of my soul:

The other day, I was discussing God’s eternity with my good friend, Chris. The most difficult aspect of the concept is determining how to speak coherently of God’s eternity while also confessing our faith in the Incarnation. Below are two paragraphs from Boethius that help us define God’s eternity in the first place. I read Boethius in undergrad, but I hadn’t thought about these passages until I was reminded of them by Eleonore Stump in her book on the thought of Thomas Aquinas:

A friend recently asked about this topic, so I thought I'd give a sketch of my thoughts. I won't be citing any sources, but hopefully what I cite as evidence is either self-evident or easily obtainable.

One of the least noticed features of Genesis 4 is that, as far as we can tell, Abel and Cain invented the concept of sacrifice as a human mode of worshiping God.

What’s strange about it is that God accepts the sacrifices despite the apparent brutality (Abel kills lambs) and even simple waste (Cain burns up vegetables). The reason it doesn’t seem as strange to us is that sacrifice is so normal for the rest of the Bible. But it ought to strike us as strange because it was an absent concept in the first three pages of Genesis and it is, in the forms we see in Scripture, absent in our lives.

One of the many conceits of the modern era is that religion is believed precisely because it provides irrational comfort to those who refuse to see things as they are.

And while I have no doubt that many believe various religious dogmas for this purpose, it simply isn’t true that Christianity can be believed, by those who understand it, solely because it is comforting. Why? Here are a few reasons:

I ran across Gavin De Becker's The Gift of Fear and picked it up. He quotes Nietzsche:

146. He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee. - Friedrich Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil aphorism 146

This line took me to Matthew 10:16. I wondered, "Why on earth does Jesus say 'wise as serpents'?" He could have said, "As wise as Solomon" or "clever as a fox." By the time of Jesus, the serpent of the Old Testament had pretty well become associated with Satan or some demonic personification of evil. So, why be clever in that way? I'm speculating below, I don't presume to know what Jesus was thinking, but things are written to be understood and "be wise as serpents" has a reference point. This means it was chosen for a reason.

Here's the great commission from Matthew 28:18-20:

Matthew 28:18-20 ESV And Jesus came and said to them [the eleven disciples], “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. (19) Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, (20) teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Perhaps the two most frequent things young Christian men ask me for advice about are relationships and overcoming a pornography habit. I’ll stick with relationships, though Dallas Willard has great advice for those who struggle to kick pornography: Beyond Pornography. On to relationships.

Most of the guys who ask for advice, though sometimes women come to my wife for such advice as well, ask how to enter into a relationship in the first place in the current dating market. Many of them suffer from a glut of two pieces of advice: