Monday 24 March 2008 at 12:59 pm
I find these discussions very interesting in terms of
what they expose about how we use language and moral judgment. Especially in
this political season. One of the things I found so refreshing about Obama's
speech was how he helped to break through very unhelpful labels such as
"racist" or "good/bad person" to a bit of a deeper level in
terms of talking about his white grandmother. I would have liked him to go
further but he was only giving a political speech.
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Friday 21 March 2008 at 2:02 pm
Lots of these around now.
Not all as meaty as this one.
Wednesday 19 March 2008 at 4:29 pm
I was listening to a sermon this morning and was thinking about women throughout the ages and the roles they have been forced to play. The sermon was talking about the fact that in Jesus’ day women were expected to prepare bodies for burial and the reason women did this work was because it was the dirty work. Women have long been forced to do the dirty work.
Why have women been forced to do the dirty work? Who has forced them? Men. Why have they forced women to do their dirty work? Because dirty work by its nature is undesirable to do. How have men forced them to do it? Violence, the threat of violence, positional power enforced by violence and its threat. Why have men been able to do this probably since before the dawn of human civilization? Men are larger and stronger and if it comes to a fight we generally speaking win. Men can enforce their will on women. Bottom line. This is of course affirmed by the reality that the vast majority of domestic violence is against women and children and done by men.
The African-American experience has been one of victimization through power as well. Divide and conquer is also a proven strategy. Isolate an individual or a village, takes its people, ship them across the ocean, keep them a minority and enslave them. Pharaoh knew how to do it and when the Hebrews were multiplying he got scared and implemented his “Hebrew reduction/assimilation” strategy.
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Wednesday 19 March 2008 at 3:56 pm
Some have noted that it was "unfair" for Obama to have to speak about race in the speech he gave. Testing is often unfair.
This got me thinking about "testing" especially
in the Bible. Jesus' "temptations" are called "tests" and
they ping the episode at Meribah in Exodus 17. The Lord's prayer asks that we
not be led into a time of testing.
Tests are not always "deserved" but they are
often defining. Obama is not the same man after his speech as he was before it.
If he wins the nomination and if he is elected this speech may prove to be a
defining moment in American racial history.
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Wednesday 12 March 2008 at 12:34 am
I'm having trouble with the search index within the blog. Use Google unless and until I can fix it. I'm seriously thinking again about switching to wordpress but I don't know if I want to try to bring all the content over.
Tuesday 11 March 2008 at 8:48 pm
I tried to go hear Keller at Berkeley on March 4 but never got in. It has been posted on YouTube.
There is also a download page to download an mp3 of the talk.
I'll go through the questions below. It was striking that most of the questioners were not Christians which I think is very cool and helpful. I'm glad they got my seat instead of me. :)
A bit more language that I hadn't heard: "not a moral performance narrative but a grace narrative". This is a very basic theme but the first time I've heard him phrase it this way.
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Tuesday 11 March 2008 at 12:01 am
As part of the book tour Keller has given a ton of interviews. One of the better ones was on a website called First things.
I found the reflecting Keller did on his age and the timing of his writing the book to be interesting. Fun interview.
I didn't get the Bob Newhart "Stop it!" joke so I checked it out on youtube. There is a lot of preaching that is essentially the same. Here's the link.
Monday 10 March 2008 at 11:58 pm
Good
panel discussion with Keller, Mark Lilla and Andrew Delbanco. The QT recording is better than the MP3 recording. The sound quality is better and it has about a half hour more material in it. Interesting discussion.
All three participants were very good, I enjoyed them all. Much of
Keller's stuff was familiar. I was quite impressed by Mark Lilla. I
thought he had an honesty and a balance about him. One of the most
engaging parts came when Lilla was considering that even articulating
the hope for the conversion of other non-Christians (he refers to a
controversial papal rewriting of a liturgy calling for the conversion
of the Jews) (this discussion in the QT video is around minute 30 and
following) is conflictive and offensive. He asserts that because this
is such a core passion within Christianity that this is conflictive.
Keller will challenge him on it along the lines that he does in his sermon on Christian exclusivity. (He also uses Lilla in another sermon where he makes a similar point.
) What struck me was the irony of the position "you shouldn't try to
convert people. It is intolerant to even want to try to convert
people." that you can't make that assertion without violating your own
admontion. Advocacy seems to be at the heart, in fact, of personhood as
we experience it. Everyone advocates for something even if they are
advocating for inadvocacy. This seems central to personhood and
something probably as part of the imago dei package.
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Thursday 06 March 2008 at 8:00 pm
This was a Voices response I want to keep.
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Thursday 06 March 2008 at 7:08 pm
This was part of a series of lectures given in England in 2007. First Lecture was
Gospel Realization. (
my outline) Second was
Gospel Communication. This is the outline I created listening to that talk.
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Wednesday 05 March 2008 at 5:56 pm
Evangelicalism helped define "success" the way the romantic comedy helped define "love".
In a romantic comedy the drama is all up until the point of consummation. Depending on the cultural era that may mean marriage, sex, or being an established couple.
Evangelicalism makes it the decision of faith, the profession of faith, the moment, the sinner's prayer, ascribing to the 4 spiritual laws, the "Roman Road", what have you.
If you think for 1 minute about the framed world of a romantic comedy illusion is lost yet we fall for the plot again and again.
Finding success in church attendance numbers requires maintaining that illusion indefinitely. We're able to do it in one romantic comedy after another and we're able to do it with church too.
Wednesday 05 March 2008 at 5:54 pm
Yesterday I traveled many miles and took precious time in the hopes of listening to a lecture by Tim Keller, the content of which was probably very familiar to me already. (He, like most preachers, recycles his stuff endlessly.) Small church pastors and member pine for the validation, fame, and comfort of large, “successful” ministries.
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Saturday 01 March 2008 at 8:43 pm
I’ve been reading LOTRs again. I heard Keller make a comment once that he reads it nearly continuously. I thought that was interesting. I’ve seen the movies (extended versions) at least 6 times. I usually watch them all the way through during Christmas-New Years season. I haven’t read the book fully through probably since college and I’m enjoying it immensely.
Last week I was dipping in and out of the two Ken’s discussion about OT and hermeneutics. I started taking the test but eventually dropped it because too often I didn’t feel like the options I was given would adequately answer the questions and I was frustrated by how the test (and too often the church) understands hermeneutics. The point it seems that many evangelicals want to make is how separate and distinct the Bible is from everything else and all other books and that this distinction somehow gives it more authority and power. The church adopts an angry insistence on certain points and the subtext becomes that these things are true BECAUSE the Bible says it, rather than understanding that the Bible makes these points BECAUSE they are true. The direction of this might itself seem a small point to some of you, but I’d assert that especially evangelistically it is not. Post-Christian people start believing in God and in Jesus Christ often BEFORE they start embracing a rigorous confidence in the Bible in all its extended strangeness for our world.
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