Archive for December, 2007:
Christmas Chaos
Christmas. Yep. It’s here. Ready or not, here it comes. Prepare to spend more than you can afford on gifts, laugh at your uncle’s dumb jokes, and gain 5-10 pounds of holiday junk food. Isn’t it crazy how life speeds up right when we should be able to slow down and appreciate it?
Does anyone else feel like Christmas has become really… fake?
Right before I started Seminary last year, I had a brief career in retail Asset Protection. I was in charge of security and safety for an entire store. I had the (dis)pleasure of working 12-14 hour days over the holidays, and specifically on Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving), and the day after Christmas. “Nightmare” is not strong enough of a word… Read more »
Oral Preaching, Written Preaching
The Bible has undoubtedly been one of the most important documents in world history. Many Christian believe it is totally true. However, you have to inquire as to the nature of this book. God did not descend from heaven and hand mankind the Bible, (although some Christians might try to sell something like that). The Bible is not one document; it is a collection of documents. The Bible has many authors, Old Testament and New Testament alike. They were written at different times (over a period of about 1500 years) and for varying reasons.
Over time, various documents were collected together, and recognized as authoritative. They were canonized. There is a lot of debate over this issue (that’s an understatement), and I think it’s an important one. I used to think canonization had to be nice and neat. In reality, it wasn’t until the 4th century that the Bible (in its current form) was all bound up together. I have often wondered why early Christians didn’t deal with the issue sooner, and I think they approached the issue differently.
Christians, Creativity, and One-Line Answers
Has anyone else asked a serious question to a Christian only to receive some cheesy, one line, pop-Christian answer? You’ve problem heard them far too frequently. Christians often seem more interested in knowing that they have an answer than they do in knowing that the answer is right, let alone the “why” behind it. Here are a few examples of what I’m talking about:
“Its alright, you can do all things through Christ…” Read more »
Just a Little Rain
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCJ6-Fi5sP4]
This video looks at Genesis 6-9 concerning Noah and the great flood. Great in the sense that it was huge, not in the sense that it was really fun time. There are a number of issues in this text, and there have been volumes written on it, but my video is only 5 minutes long. That means my goal for the video was simply to cover the author’s main point in including this narrative in the overall story. Let me know if I do a good enough job explaining how that works, because I really breezed over a lot of stuff. Thanks and stay tuned:)
