God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life

Posted on April 9, 2008 by me

I find that I sometimes have issues with what Michael Spencer has to say over at internetmonk.com, but I do appreciate his willingness to think outside of his particular box. He comes from a Southern Baptist background, I believe, although he considers himself “post-evangelical.” As with all of us, it’s very difficult to completely shake off the grid we were raised in, so I think we would see the same thing still from very different viewpoints. But then, sometimes I find him very much right on.  In his post from yesterday, he makes some very good points concerning how many evangelicals approach evangelism, contrasted with how Jesus approached it:

I think it’s telling that the two most prolific evangelism programs in evangelicalism both approach their audience with questions that Jesus never used.

“Do you know that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life?”

“If you were to die tonight, and God were to asked you, why should I let you into my heaven, what would be your answer?”

He points out that Jesus merely proclaimed the Kingdom of Heaven, which had very different connotations than our dangling Heaven on a stick (my terminology). Spencer continues:

Evangelicalism is a religion of decisions and transactions. Jesus proclaims the arrival of the reign of God. There are decisions to be made, but reducing the Gospel to a decision to accept “God’s plan for my life” or giving the right answer to the question of how to go to heaven seems to have moved well past what Jesus was doing in his earthly ministry.

He’s been reading NT Wright’s Surprised by Hope, which I think probably prompted the post, although the thinking is obviously his own. I don’t think what he says is necessarily new, but it bears repeating.

My own take

My own background, as my faithful readers know, is Lutheran. After being “evangelized” away from the Lutheran church in my early 20s, I have lived among the evangelicals for about 30 years, however I never really became one of them. I’ve adopted the term “Lutheran expatriate” for lack of any better description.

When I first found myself in college (actually, I didn’t really find myself until a few years later), I hung with various campus groups, including InterVarsity and Campus Crusade. I was terribly turned off by the CC bunch, who were bound and determined to get me to say their little prayer; no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t convince them that I was “saved.” I stopped going there after a couple of weeks, and did my best to avoid them after that. So, from that time on, the line “Did you know that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life?” became somewhat of a joke for me.

While I appreciate the point Michael Spencer is making, I now have to say that I think the question is valid; not only that, but years later it became one of my basic messages. I think that it is absolutely true that God loves you and does indeed have a wonderful plan for your life. The problem is not in the question, it’s in the application.

God’s plan is not just to get you into Heaven (or saved from hell). Have you ever noticed that while Jesus definitely emphasized the spiritual kingdom rather than Earthly interpretations (as the Jews did), his plan was to get people into Life, not into Heaven. “The Kingdom of Heaven is within reach.” That didn’t mean that they’d all be dead soon, it meant that you could reach out and touch it; it was here, it was now, it was happening.

With Jesus’ death and resurrection, he didn’t just buy us tickets to Heaven; he began the re-creation of the world. Everything changed. The reality of the resurrection (for everyone) was one thing that became reality. The second was the “pouring out” of the Holy Spirit “upon all flesh.” It’s a brave new world. We don’t even realize it, but we can’t comprehend a world without the Holy Spirit (and I believe that applies to non-Christians as well). God’s plan is for us to step into the ongoing re-creation of everything, where “with God, all things are possible.”

Live the resurrection! God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

Posted in Spiritual stuff, Theological Musings | 2 Comments

Much ado about Darwin / The progress myth

Posted on April 4, 2008 by me

I’ve got to admit it’s getting better
A little better all the time
(it can’t get more worse)
– Lennon/McCartney, “Getting Better”

You could say I’ve lost my faith in science and progress…
– Sting, “If I Ever Lose My Faith”

Most people in the Western world probably know who Charles Darwin is, and understand that that he had something to do with formulating the theory of evolution. If they haven’t learned about him in school, they’ve seen his name inside the little walking fish emblems on many cars. It seems lately that he has become something of a poster child for evolution, scorned by some and sainted (in a matter of speaking) by others.  If he were still alive, he’d probably be wishing people would stop talking about him and leave him in peace.

A few days ago I wrote about the arrogance that is attached to modernism, still the pervasive worldview in the West. Modernism, I think, is essential to our current understanding of science, or at the very least is so intertwined that it’s hard to tell them apart. As I wrote, I think this is true of much Evangelical theology as well, where elements of the scientific approach to knowledge has permeated our thinking. Modernism, growing out of the Enlightenment and the rediscovery and molding of Greek philosophy, focused knowledge on the part rather than the whole, on the individual rather than the community. As a result, you could say that Modernism often fails to see the forest for the trees. Modernism also brought us the myth of objectivity, and the fundamental belief in progress.

In NT Wright’s Surprised by Hope, he discusses the myth of progress and it’s impact on the church as well as on society. He had this to say about Darwin, and the rise of Darwinian thought:

… Darwin was himself not so much the great new thinker, coming from nowhere to his radical new idea, but rather the exact product of his times, one particular high-water mark in the onward rush of liberal modernist optimism, himself the product of a particular evolution of Western thought. The eagerness with which his ideas were embraced and reapplied not only in the narrow biological sphere in which they belonged but also in far wider areas such as society and politics indicates well enough the mood of his times.  …  Evolution, in this more general sense of progress, was already widely believed; it was a deeply convenient philosophy for those who wanted to justify their own massive industrial and imperial expansion; Darwin geve it some apparent scientific legitimacy, which was quickly acted upon and which, within half a century, had been used to justify everything from eugenics to war.  

Wright talks about how this notion of progress – that change is ultimately for the better, and that the future is necessarily better than the past – was adopted by the church as well as by science, and social Darwinism became the social gospel, the belief that the meddling of the church could solve the problem of evil. Not that social work (what we call the mercy ministries) isn’t good, but we can see every day in the news that we as a race – and even as Americans – are no less evil than we were 150 years ago.

What I am asking myself is what is probably the foundational post-modern question (or at least should be): “If we were able to remove the elements of modernism, what would we have left of Christianity, and of science?”  It’s one thing, of course, to ask this question (i.e. “deconstruct”) of Christianity, but altogether another thing to ask this of science.  Without the foundational worldview of modernism, could science survive?  If so, what would it look like? 

I have some thoughts, and I think that especially in areas like quantum physics, where cause and effect sometimes breaks down, we are beginning to see some of this.  To quote from yet another song, “The times, they are a changing.” If Darwin was a product of his times, what kind of scientist is a product of our time?  These are some of the things I think about when I should be sleeping.

Posted in Faith, Science & Doubt | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Really good coffee…

Posted on April 2, 2008 by me

It’s on my header, “really good coffee.”  The small print, of course, does say that I don’t provide the coffee.  The least I could do, however, is to give you some ideas about how to get some really good coffee on your own, so you could fully enjoy my blog experience.

The first suggestion, of course, is that you can go to Starbucks. I don’t care that they’re the big corporate thing, I just prefer Starbucks to any other coffee I’ve had; I drink Cafe Estima, which besides tasting great, is also a Fair Trade coffee. So, it makes me feel good, too.  In my opinion, Starbucks make the smoothest, most consistant and least bitter espresso that I’ve had.  And, I’ve had a lot of espresso over the years. (I will say, though, that there’s a little shop near me that makes a better mocha, but that’s more about the chocolate…)

However, if you want really, really, good coffee at home, here’s a couple of alternative coffee makers that you really should check out.

The first is the Toddy cold brew system.  I had heard about it from a friend late last year, and as it turned out, the non-Starbucks coffee shop that my son works for uses Toddy coffee for their cold coffee drinks. Lo and behold, I got one for Christmas (thanks in part to my Amazon wish-list).  The Toddy system is pretty simple, actually, it’s a white plastic container with a drain at the bottom, and a glass jar.  You put this really unique felt-like filter in the bottom of the plastic container, and put in a pound of coffee and 9 cups of cold water. Then, you let it soak for about 12 hours, after which you pull the little plug out of the drain and let it filter through into the glass jar. 

What you end up with is approximately 6 cups concentrated coffee that you store in your fridge. When you want a cup, you simply mix one part concentrate to 3 parts hot water.  The result is by far the smoothest, richest coffee I’ve ever tasted, with about 2/3 less acid that normally brewed coffee. It’s truly almost like a different drink (I decided to still drink regular coffee in the morning, as I need that “edge”).  It’s great hot, and even better cold.

The real downside to the Toddy (and there is a real downside) is that they misrepresent (in my opinion) the efficiency of the system.  If you drink 16 oz cups, and mix it per the dirctions, that means you are using 4 ounces of concentrate for every cup; that’s 16 wonderful cups of coffee from one pound of coffee grounds.  Considering I drink regular brew in the A.M., and drink cold-brewed decaf in the afternoon and evening, I barely make it through a week per pound. As I only buy Starbucks beans (seriously, I don’t even own stock), that means about 65 cents per cup; not bad compared to alot of other things, including coffee out (even at 7-11), but way more than you’re used to paying for home-brewed coffee.  I have found, however, that I don’t need quite as much concentrate as they say, so I probably get 20 good cups per pound.

However, it’s also the easiest cup of coffee I’ve ever made, and that’s worth a lot, too.

Now, for my 2nd recommendation.  A few weeks ago, EricW commented on my blog and told me about the Aerobie AeroPress.  I read up on it, and was so impressed that I bought one as a birthday gift for my brother-in-law (timing is everything).  I’ve had a few cups of his AeroPressed coffee, and I have to say that it’s quite good as well. It’s very smooth and non-acidy, better by far than a typical drip or even a French Press.

The AeroPress is kind of a manual espresso machine, making from 1-2 mugs at a time, depending on how strong you want it.  Full strength, it makes 4 shots of espresso in under a minute.  It’s essentially a plastic tube with a filter on the bottom (it uses paper filters) and a plastic plunger. You put the grounds and hot water in the tube, stir it for a few seconds, then slowly push the plunger to the bottom. The air pressure forces the water through the grounds, and that’s it.  Again, it’s essentially a hand-powered espresso machine. 

And, with the Aeropress, there’s no downside that I can see. The grounds just push out (it creates a neat little hockey-puck of packed grounds) so clean-up is way easier than a French press, and it uses less coffee per cup than a French press.

So, carpe caffeum.  (I think I’ve lived up to my header, now.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Random Thoughts, Reviews | 2 Comments

Age of the Machine

Posted on April 1, 2008 by me

Apparently this video has been posted on science blogs all around the web, including Panda’s Thumb.  What’s interesting is that while the science blogs see this as a pro-Darwinist video, most others see it as making fun of Dawkins, Myers, et al.  It’s an interesting phenomenon, isn’t it?  I mean, really, you decide:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaGgpGLxLQw]

Regardless of who it pokes fun at, you have to admit, it’s pretty clever.

Posted in Faith, Science & Doubt, Humor and/or Sarcasm | Tagged | Leave a comment