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11 AM 04/19/05 I have been reading Alfred North Whitehead's Introduction to Mathematics... He explains the value of mathematics in its ability to speak generally about particulars. In ch. 2 he shows how variables do the same for numbers, they can express generalizations about numerical relationships. Ch. 3 is on the application, and false application, of mathematics to particulars, that is practical issues. He briefly mentions the story (myth?) of Archimedes inventing a weapon with mirrors that focused sunlight and could set an attacking Roman ship on fire. Then he tells the story of Archimedes discovering "specific gravity" in order to tell whether a golden crown contained impurities. When the Romans attacked Syracuse, soldiers found Archimedes studying a geometric shape he had drawn on the floor. When he did not immediately obey their orders, they killed him. Whitehead writes: The death of Archimedes by the hands of a Roman soldier is symbolical of a world-changing of the first magnitude: the theoretical Greeks, with their love of abstract sceince, were superseded in the leadership of the European world by the practicial Romans. Lord Beaconsfield, in one of his novels, has defined a practical man as a man who practises the errors of his forefathers. The Romans were a great race, but they were cursed with the sterility which waits upon practicality. They did not improve upon the knowledge of their forefathers, and all their advances were confined to the minor technical details of engineering. They were not dreamers enough to arrive at new points of view, which could give a more fundamental cotrol over the forces of nature. No Roman lost his life because he was absorbed in the contemplation of a mathematical diagram. (p. 26) |
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3:03 PM 10/21/2004 . . . to whom shall we go "Pothagoras, Epicurus, Socrates, Plato, these are the torches of the world; Jesus is the light of day." Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables At times thousands of people gathered to hear Jesus speak. The public were attracted to his presence and teaching. Of course his healings had a part in drawing these large crowds. On one of these occasions, Jesus fed at least five thousand people from a small amount of food. The crowd was flabbergasted and ready to crown him king on the spot. Jesus withdrew to the mountains. When he reappeared in another town the next day, the crowd quickly found him. They were expecting more food and even reminded him how God gave manna to Israel in the wilderness (Juvenal's words come to mind, concerning the Roman formula for public contentment: “panem et circenses”, bread and circuses). Instead, Jesus told them to work for food that will not perish. He himself is the true bread from heaven and if they believed in Him they would never hunger again. Most of his disciples found this bread too hard to swallow and thereafter stopped following him. Turning to the remaining disciples, he said, “are you too going to leave?” Peter responded, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). Since we cannot know everything by experience, each of us chooses a teacher or teachers to whom we listen and allow to influence our thinking. Sometimes we do this consciously in the form of a book, religious leader or profound thinker. At other times we are less aware of this process, such as with parents or traditions. Still, the choice is real. In this manner, Jesus stands head and shoulders above any other source of knowledge or person (including ourselves). His wisdom is, by all accounts profound. If we were to line up all the great philosophers, scientists and sages next to one another, who could be better than Jesus? A parent? Some college professor whose impact on the world, barely outlives him? What more intelligent decision could a person make than to choose to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. In a Woody Allen film he is confronted by a friend who asks him, “who do you think you are, God?” He responds, “I have to pattern my life after somebody.” Jesus Christ is the pattern, the author and captain of our faith. |
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6:41 AM 3/30/2004 The Gangrene of a Critical Spirit This morning I've been reading Luke 7:28-35 . . . Jesus said, “among those born of women none is greater than John. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.” (When all the people heard this, and the tax collectors too, they declared God just, having been baptized with the baptism of John, but the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him.) “To what then shall I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? They are like children . . . 'we played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.' For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, 'He has a demon.' The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, 'Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!'” Paul tells Timothy to stay in Ephesus in order to charge certain persons not to teach different doctrine. He tells Timothy to take pains in his preaching; to devote himself to theologically sound teaching. In 1 Timothy chapter 1 Paul tells us that deeds of the flesh are “contrary to sound doctrine.” Likewise, Paul tells Titus that Christian behavior should “adorn the doctrine of God.” Theology that neglects personal devotion is incomplete at best, heresy at worse. The Pharisees had some right doctrines, such as the resurrection of the dead and the infallibility of scripture. But their theology was incomplete. Most of them did not recognize the Messiah when he came to them, and that He was their righteousness by faith. Without the Spirit, carnal behavior was inevitable. In this passage from Luke, Jesus exposes their critical spirit. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees! Beware of possesing doctrine while denying its power. One could not possiblly please the Pharisees in this passage . . . one moment expecting you to dance, the other moment mourn . . . saying John was demon-possessed for his ascetic lifestyle and yet calling Jesus a glutton and drunkard for not living the same lifestyle. I will never forget my first internship in the summer of '89 . . . the pastor of the church was presented with a list of grievances, one of which was that he didn't own a tv . . . what an extremist! The previous pastor had also been given a list of grievances, chief of which was that he watched too much tv! Brethren, beware the leaven of the pharisees. |
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5:41 AM 3/23/2004 The Cross is both our example and our strength There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and death. Romans 8:1-2 In the preface of his commentary on Romans, Luther has this to say on the relationship between faith and keeping the law: St. Paul . . . calls as witness David, who says in Psalm 32 that a person becomes just without works but doesn't remain without works once he has become just. We do this in the manner which Paul makes crystal clear in Galatians chapter three: O foolish Galatians . . . Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh . . . or by hearing with faith?. It is in this context that Paul gives his list of the marvelous results of the Spirit in our lives: love, joy and peace (5:22). Similarly, Paul says to the believers in Rome: To set the mind on the flesh is death. To set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace (Romans 8:6). Setting our minds on the Spirit means focusing on God's promises in Christ. Setting our mind on the Spirit through faith enables us to walk in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. Without Him, we are left to our own spiritual resources. As the mind set on the flesh is death, so the mind set on the law is powerless against death. Even if we are meditating on how the law reflects the character of God or meditating on how love is the summary and perfection of the law, yet we are powerless before it, without God's Spirit. We stand condemned, especially if perfect love is our standard of behavior. Setting our mind on the Spirit means we consider how perfect love acts toward us. The One who is a raging fire of infinite love, Himself breaks through the stone-wall-condemnation of our un-love. We walk in the Spirit when we take hold of these promises of Christ by faith. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us . . . who walk according to the Spirit. If we approach the death of Christ from a strictly moralistic perspective, then the cross reveals how self-sacrifice and dying for others is an essential ingrediant in true love. By this we all stand condemned. Also by that standard we see the apostles' failure when they self-seekingly abandoned Christ on the eve of his crucifixion. This is where the moral influence, example and governmental theories of the atonement fall apart. The cross is the perfect example of love and justice. Yet it was not merely an example of these. If the cross was merely an example of love & righteousness, then it chiefly raised the bar of righteous behavior impossibly high. The cross clearly demonstrates the extent which humans fall short of perfect love, but it is also the power of God for salvation . . . "by his stripes we are healed." These other theories of the atonement contain truth, but they are inadequate because their cross leaves us without help as law-breakers. But the mind set on the Spirit is life . . . The Spirit empowered the early church and changed their cowardly self-seeking into self-sacrifice. When Stephen was being stoned for preaching the gospel, the Spirit of Christ Himself called out from Stephen's breast "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." |
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11:30 AM 3/16/2004 Kept by God through Prayer This morning I've been studying Jude and listening to a John Piper sermon on how prayer is one of God's essential means of grace. As you read Jude notice that the opening verses and the closing verses assure us that God keeps us in Christ, that is, we are being kept by God. God is preserving our Christian lives by His power. At the same time, Jude tells us that we are to keep ourselves in the love of God by building up our faith and by praying in the Spirit. Here's the passage: To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ . . . you beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear; hating even the garment stained by the flesh. Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory and great joy. . . |
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12:56 PM 3/12/2004 The first time I remember worshipping God was during the summer of 1983. I was twelve years old and we were vacationing at Virginia Beach on the Fourth of July. I had seen the ocean on tv, but when I I saw it with my own eyes, its beauty was overwhelming. For several years I had denied God's existence and even mocked Christians. Yet when my dad and I were walking along the beach at sunrise I found myself saying, “How can someone see this and not believe in God.” Had I been sophisticated in my atheism, I could have said “Isn't god beautiful?” . . . But God was doing the opposite in my life, forming cracks in my worldview. My sixth grade year had been the most difficult of my life . . . My parents split up. I began skipping school and considering even more rash actions. Atheism was reaching its logical outcome: cynicism. Seeing the ocean was such an overwhelming experience. For a brief moment in my godless life, I couldn't imagine life without God. It was the beginning of doubts. . . doubting the view of the world I'd received from childhood education and popular culture. These doubts culminated several years later in a prayer, the first one I remember praying, “Oh God, how beautiful the world would be if you were real. Show yourself to me!” |
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Meditations from the last few years. . . | ||||||
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3/6/2003 "To my God a heart of flame; To my fellow men a heart of love; To myself a heart of steel" Augustine comments? | ||||||
| 12/19/2000 "All evidence points to there having been, in the earliest religious thought, a vision of the cosmos that was profoundly cyclical. The assumptions that early man made about the world were, in all there essentials, little different from the assumptions that later and more sophisticated societies, like Greece and India, would make in a more elaborate manner... The Jews were the first people to break out of this circle, to find a new way of thinking and experiencing, a new way of understanding and feeling the world...But their worldview has become so much a part of us that at this point it might as well have been written on our cells as a genetic code. We find it impossible to shed--even for a brief experiment--that it is now the cosmic vision of all other peoples that appears to us exotic and strange." Thomas Cahill in The Gifts of the Jews pp. 5-6 comments? | ||||||
| 8/22/2000 "The ordinary idea which we all have before we become Christians is this. We take as starting point our ordinary self with its various desires and interests. We then admit that something else--call it 'morality' or 'decent behaviour,' or 'the good of society'--has claims on this self: claims which interfere with its own desires. What we mean by 'being good' is giving in to those claims... But we are hoping all the time that when all the demands have been met, the poor natural self will still have some chance, and some time, to get on with its own life and do what it likes. In fact, we are very like the honest man paying his taxes. He pays them all right, but he does hope that there will be enough left over for him to live on. Because we are still taking our natural self as the starting point." The Christian way is different...Christ says 'Give me All. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. I don't want to cut off a branch here and there, I want to have the whole tree down. ...Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked...I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours."C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity p. 168-169 comments? | ||||||
| 5/18/2000 "Benjamin B. Warfield was a renowned theologian who taught at Princeton Seminary for almost 34 years . . . Many people are aware of his famous books, like The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible. But what most people don't know is that in 1876, at the age of twenty-five, he married Annie Pierce Kinkead and took a honeymoon to Germany. During a fierce storm Annie was struck by lightning and permanently paralyzed. After caring for her for thirty-nine years Warfield laid her to rest in 1915. Because of her extraordinary needs, Warfield seldom left home for more than two hours time during all those years of marriage. . ." "But when Warfield came to write his thoughts on Romans 8:28, he said . . . 'All that comes to you is under His controlling hand. . . Though we are too weak to help ourselves and too blind to ask for what we need . . . He will so govern all things that we shall reap only good from all that befalls us.'" John Piper in Future Grace p. 176 comments? | ||||||
| 11/23/99 "Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and Thy wisdom infinite. And Thee would man praise; man, but a particle of Thy creation; man, that bears about him his mortality, the witness of his sin, the witness that Thou resistest the proud: yet would man praise Thee; he, but a particle of Thy creation. Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee. Grant me, Lord, to know and understand which is first, to call on Thee or to praise Thee? and, again, to know Thee or to call on Thee? for who can call on Thee, not knowing Thee? for he that knoweth Thee not, may call on Thee as other than Thou art. Or, is it rather, that we call on Thee that we may know Thee? but how shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? or how shall they believe without a preacher? and they that seek the Lord shall praise Him: for they that seek shall find Him, and they that find shall praise Him. I will seek Thee, Lord, by calling on Thee; and will call on Thee, believing in Thee; for to us hast Thou been preached. My faith, Lord, shall call on Thee, which Thou has given me, wherewith Thou hast inspired me, through the Incarnation of Thy Son, through the ministry of the Preacher." Augustine's The Confessions, Book II comments? |