Finding God in Los Angeles

Introduction: The members of my Sabbath School have gone on frequent short term mission trips, usually to Mexico. During these trips, they had powerful experiences of the sacred. However, these experiences are much rarer in Los Angeles. This has given the impression that you have to go on mission trips to experience God. I feel that this unbalanced view should be rectified, so I will be sharing some ideas that I have been trying recently with some early success.

• When was the last time you experienced God's presence?
• Do you want have these experiences again?

Discussion
Why do we have trouble experiencing God?

• Focusing on the Created and not the Creator
• Hard heart

What is a hard heart?

• Ephesians 4:17-19 (Unable to understand)
• Mark 3:1-5 (Lack of Compassion)
• John 12:40 (blindness)
• Pharaoh in Egypt

How do we gain a new heart?

• God sometimes breaks through
• Certain religious practices

Religious practices done in groups

• Sacred story (Bible)
• Sacred rituals (Communion)
• Sacred time (Sabbath)
• Sacred music
• Sacred speech (speaking in tongues)
• Sacred silence
• Sacred space
• Sacred journey
• Sacred laws
• Which of these, do we practice in our church? Give examples

Individual practices

• Verbal prayer
• Non-verbal prayer
• Deeds of compassion
• Individual Bible study

Several practices were listed, which ones were incorporated in the mission trip?
How would you incorporate these practices in your daily life?


Conclusion
We have talked about several ideas to help you experience God in your life. Not all of these ideas will work with every person. It is important that we try these ideas to find which work for us.


Bibliography
Marcus Borg. “Opening to God: The Heart of Spirituality” in The God We Never Knew, Harper San Francisco, 1997.

Praying for vengence, praying for mercy

There is an interesting article on the Specturm Magazine website. In it James Coffin says

Recently, syndicated radio talk-show host Dennis Prager asked: "Would God consider it ’good’ for me to pray for him to immediately (and humanely) kill the top 1 percent of the world’s worst evildoers? Yes or no? Why or why not?"

My gut reaction? Yes! Absolutely! Off with their heads! Zap ’em with lightning bolts!

But…on second thought…

I find too often we are ready to condemn people, asking God to enact his judgement upon them. Instead I think we should follow the model of Abraham

Then Abraham drew near, and said, "Wilt thou indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; wilt thou then destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from thee to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from thee! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" And the LORD said, "If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake."
--Genesis 18:23-26

or Moses.

But Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, "O LORD, why does thy wrath burn hot against thy people, whom thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, `With evil intent did he bring them forth, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth'? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou didst swear by thine own self, and didst say to them, `I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it for ever.'" And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people.
--Exodus 32:11-14

Beginning to Pray

I just finished reading "Beginning to Pray" by Anthony Bloom. Its a very good practical guide on how to pray from a Russian Orthodox perspective. Bloom writes beautifully and very richly and he has many good ideas. We must realize that we are outsiders alienated from God. If we want to find God we need to look inside ourselves rather than way up somewhere in the heavens. We must be willing to give up everything in our quest. In addition he does speak some about managing time. As far as I know the book is out of print, however religion-online.org has a section on prayer that might be of help as well.

CrossWords Recap

Overall I think the weekend went well, however the program fell a little short. However we did get a mention in the local paper. I don't know how long this link will be active so I will quote some of the main points.

They call themselves Christians, but they don't want to go to church.

"It's a problem in a lot of Christian churches," said John Jenson, 48, pastor of the South Bay Seventh-day Adventist Church in Torrance, referring to a trend among people ages 18 to 35.

"That's why the CrossWords convention is so important, it gives them the freedom to create and participate in their own worship experience."

It was pitched as a program led by young people for young people. The leadership was a little elderly in make up, although young adults did participate in the committees. I think there was also a fear that our service may offend the older generation. I am blessed to be in a church that isn't afraid to try out new worship styles, however this weekend felt like a regular church service to me.

To address the problem, Kiemeney brought together 30 pastors from Seventh-Day Adventist churches in the Los Angeles region to discuss a plan to reconnect with the younger generation. The concept of a two-day conference, created by and targeted to young adults, was launched in fall 2004.

Two pastors, recognized for their work with young people, were named as ideal candidates to make the idea a reality. One is Elizabeth Talbot, associate pastor at the Vallejo Drive Seventh-day Adventist Church in Glendale. The other, Cary Fisher, is associate pastor at the Norwalk Seventh-day Adventist Church.

As the speakers for the program, Pastors Talbot and Fisher did an excellent job. I think most of the deficiencies are a result of lack of communication between the local churches.

Over all, I say it was a good effort that fell short but I think we will do better next time. Future events will be published on the CrossWords website.

CrossWords

I will be involved a special program this weekend. I invite all of you to come and join even though, from sitemeter, I know that I only get the occaisonal visitor. So in case anybody reads this post from the Los Angeles area in the next few hours, please come.

Sabbath

This past week, I briefly saw on the Today show a discussion about the increased stress people have on the weekends. Unfortunately, I don't have a link. One of the most important concepts in the Seventh Day Adventist church is the Sabbath. It is also misunderstood, and I think that is partially our fault. Typically it is presented as another requirement, especially when "mark of the beast" talk starts creeping in. Sabbath really should be understood as a gift to us, a day of rest. The Sabbath is the one day a week where I can do absolutely nothing and not feel guilty at all. I try not to even think about work or school, although it can be hard at times. Most of Christianity no longer celebrates any Sabbath (whether it be on Saturday or Sunday.) So this weekend, take a break enjoy the Sabbath. You won't regret it.

Principles for Biblical Interpretation

CQ has posted a set of guidelines for Biblical interpretation. How we read the Bible is important and we will come away with different assumptions based on our preconceptions. So here are the five principles presented by Gerhard Pfandl.

• The Canonical Principle
• The "Unity of Scripture" Principle
• The Literal Interpretation Principle
• The Spiritual Discernment Principle
• The Christological Principle

While I find myself in agreement with the last two, the remaining principles are problematic. I will start with the third principle. My main issue with literal interpretation principle is that in our over reliance on the literalness, we sometimes miss the whole point of the story. For example, in the book of Jonah we are told that Jonah was swallowed by a big fish. So I have seen Sabbath Schools spend an hour talking about what kind of fish it was or how it was possible for Jonah to stay alive for three days inside it. In the process, we forget about the point of the whole story, which speaks of God's radical forgiveness. In fact Jonah initially fled, not because he was afraid of going to Ninevah, but because he knew that God would show mercy. Jonah wished that the whole city would rot in hell for what they had done to his people. In terms of the lesson of the story it doesn't matter whether the events in Jonah actually happened or didn't.

In terms of scriptural unity, I could list pages of contradictions or link to someone else who has already done the work (Be aware that I disagree with most of the conclusions reached at the Skeptics Annotated Bible.) Most of these are minor concerning dates and other trivia. Some of them are more significant. This principle ignores the progression in ideas among the Isrealites. For example, Satan does not appear in books written before the exile.

The canonical principle is based on the principle of "Sola Scriptura." The Bible is read by people, each with their own preconceived ideas, worldview, and biases. It was written for people in a culture that is far different from ours. We need to be aware of this, because it is impossible for us to read the Bible apart from our culture. In the book of Revelation, many of our conclusions of end time events are based on our Adventist traditions. Someone else would not necessarily come to the same conclusion. This is why the fourth principle is extremely important, if you are concerned about coming up with the "correct" Biblical interpretation.

More useful resources

I have added a few more resources in the sidebar that I have found to be helpful. These are all Adventist specific. Adventist Today offers good commentary, but is not updated often. Both the AAF website and CQ have material relevant for creating Sabbath School discussions. In addition to actual lesson plans, CQ provides many helpful tips on how to create exciting Sabbath Schools. Some of them are worthless, but look through them for suggestions.

Ideas for future Sabbath School lessons

I am basically putting these out there so that I can refer back to them later.

• Experiencing God. My Sabbath School class has been active in going on mission trips. They have had some wonderful encounters with God on these trips. However they have stated that they don't experience God in their every day lives. I find this unbalanced, so I would like to discuss it further.
• The Importance of the Present. So much of my Christian experience has been based on a future anticipation of heaven. As Christians we should be more concerned about our present reality. This is an extension of a talk I did about prophecy not being about the future, but the present.
  

Mother's Day Sabbath School Revisted

I previously posted an outline for a Sabbath School class on mother images of God. I have a few more comments to make. I was able to use this outline for Sabbath School this last weekend. It worked out fairly well. I made a few mistakes on text locations. If it doesn't make sense, look at the following or previous texts. Also for further reading, may I suggest Marcus Borg's book, "The God We Never Knew." In chapter 3 he writes about images of God, which also includes female images.

Just finished reading another Marcus Borg book

I just finished reading "The God We Never Knew" by Marcus Borg. I have found his books to be quite illuminating, because he approaches Christianity from a different perspective. I am finding much that was causing me trouble in my own faith was due to a misunderstanding of what Christianity is about.

There are many common misconceptions about the nature of God. For example, many think of God as a seperate being outside of our physical reality. This is known as Transcendance. We know that the universe is incrediblly large, which means that God must be very distant and remote to be outside of our physical world. I found this God to be ineffective, which has resulted in a crisis of faith. However there is another conception of God taught by the Church which is known as his Immanence or closeness to us. Although it is paradoxical, the truth is that both of these concepts about God are true and we need both to be in balance for a healthy view of God.

Book Review: Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time

Marcus Borg is an active participant of the Jesus Seminar. One of the aspects of the Jesus Seminar is their search for the historical Jesus. So they try to determine which parts of this gospel might have happened and which portions may not be portraying literal events. In his book, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, he talks about what Jesus means to our post modern world, where people may not believe in the divinity of Christ or in the accuracy of the Bible record. I found this book to be helpful for my faith, even though Borg does not believe that Christ was literally resurrected or born of a virgin.

If you were to ask the average Seventh Day Adventist why Christ came to live on earth, without a doubt the most common response would be that he came to pay the price for our sins. This doctrine, called substitionary atonement, finds its basis in the rituals of the Jewish people. Borg calls this the "Priestly Story" and he includes it as one of three meta-naratives in the Bible. While there is nothing wrong with this image, we tend to forget other aspects of Christ's ministry. Borg brings this back into focus by presenting other images of Jesus that have help Christians in the past.

Useful resources in the side bar

I have started a list of useful resources, which can be found in the sidebar. Today I added three websites of particular interest. These websites are good sources of written material. Early Christian Writings and Early Jewish Writings, like their names suggest, are concerned with the early writings on which our faith is based. In addition to all the books of the Bible, hese websites include discussion and links to websites with full text for hundreds of other writings written by the Christian church and Jewish religion. For history and commentary, I would recommend checking these sites first.

The other site, Religion Online, is a library of over 5000 articles and book chapters. I haven't had a chance to fully go through the site, but it seems there is some quality material that should be worth looking into.

Open Source Sabbath School

As a Sabbath School teacher in my church, I struggle with how to make the time relevant to my students. In the ideal Sabbath School, all participants would come away from Sabbath School with more than they had coming in. More love for Christ. More knowledge. And more excitement for serving God. This is a high bar that I have set for myself and I frequently fall short of it.

My stint as a Sabbath School teacher began over a year ago. Our church has a very active youth program. The problem was that there was nothing for the youth after they graduated from high school and went on to college and careers. So they stopped coming. I have always felt that this is one of the largest problems in today's church and since nobody else was volunteering, I stepped in.

My biggest problem has been finding material to help prepare the lesson. Unfortunately, the lesson quarterlies are rarely conducive to a lively discussion. In addition much of the material found in Christian bookstores suffer from the same problem. So I find myself creating discussions from scratch. This takes much more time as a teacher, so I was very excited when I read Gordon Short's proposal (Atoday Jan/Feb 2004). It has much going for it, but I think it doesn't take advantage of some of the latest technology and available resources.

Those who are involved with the computer industry are well aware of open source software. Typically computer software is developed by a single company. Because the company wants to retain its intellectual property, they release as little information about the internal workings of their software as possible. Open source however is built on a community of sharing. A small group of people develop a program to help solve a task. Others are able to take that program as is, or they can look through the source code and help improve it by removing bugs and adding features. Examples of open source software include Linux, the Firefox browser, and even Bible study tools.

Not only have open source principles been used to create software but they have been used to create music and literature. MIT has even created a website where they post course materials that are free for any to use, including lecture notes, homework assignments, and even supplemental reading. MITs Open Course Ware project has been very successful with over 900 courses available and 11,000 visitors a day as of September 2004.

Of course MIT had a large sum of seed money, but something similar could be accomplished on a smaller scale to provide Sabbath School content. This could include book reviews, discussion questions, activity suggestions. All of these materials would be available for download and modifications. The topics could be wide ranging, discussing everything from the lesson Quarterly to Christian issues. Ideally a whole community would be established providing a vigorous discussion on how to improve Sabbath School. So when an item is posted, other people can read it, use it, and make suggestions on how to improve the document. Stories can be shared about what works and what does not.

Now I have a confession I must make. I am a blogger and I spend many hours a day reading blogs, short for web log. Blogs are extremely powerful tools and very easy to set up. The majority of bloggers just blog about their life, like an online journal. However I have seen blogs used to facilitate open source journalism, bring political activists together, and provide commentary about the events of the day. In my experience blogs reach their full potential when they inspire action in the real world and the best blogs are enjoyed actively. The power of blogs is in their ease of constructing an interactive website that provides a venue for discussion. Very little technical knowledge is required.

My first blog was a venue for me to discuss one of my hobbies, astronomy. Reading Gordon Short's article inspired me to act, so I have set up a blog, http://anewsabbathschool.blogspot.com, as a venue for sharing my Sabbath School lessons that I have developed. It is still a work in progress and if this stokes enough interest, it can be greatly expanded.

What I have proposed, I believe is a good low-cost method to determine the interest level for such materials for Sabbath School. While open source has many benefits, there are some things, for which traditional models are better suited. Companies are able to make money with open source by providing either extra services or extra closed-source features to paying customers. While providing text and images are relatively low cost, it is more costly to provide sound or video files. So these more expensive options would be available on a subscription or per download basis.

My hope in writing this is that Sabbath School can be a more exciting time for spiritual growth and learning. While my material may not be the best suited for this effort. It is my hope that they will inspire others in their attempts to improve Sabbath School.

Mother's Day Sabbath School Class

Due to the Mother's Day Brunch, we didn't have time for sabbath school. But here is an outline of the lesson I prepared.

God as mother

Introduction. Since I was a child, I was taught that the trinity includes God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. While the Bible predominantly uses the male gender when referring to God, other texts speak of God as female. The lesson today will look closer at these texts.

• When you pray, do ever call God “mother?”
• Do you find it weird when others pray like that?

Biblical Texts.

• Isaiah 49:14-15
• Isaiah 66:12-14
• Isaiah 46:3-4
• Luke 15:8-10
• Matthew 23:36
• Hosea 13:8
• 1 John 5:4

Discussion Questions.

• How is God like a mother in each of these texts?
• Is God male or female?
• Why do we usual refer to God in the male gender?
• How did the culture of Israel effect the portrayal of God in the Bible?
• If the Bible were written in a matriarchal society, would God be our mother?
• Why would it be helpful for some people to pray to God the Mother?

Conclusion. I find that the female imagery used in the Bible can be helpful for many people. God is beyond the categories of gender so it is equally accurate and equally inaccurate to call God, He or She. Ultimately, it comes down to each person. If the God the Father is unapproachable, maybe they should pray God the Mother.

References.

• Dr. Margo Houts. “Feminine Images for God: What does the Bible say?” http://www-stu.calvin.edu/chimes/970418/o1041897.htm
• Marcus Borg. Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. ch. “Jesus the Wisdom of God”. In it he describes how Wisdom, a feminine word, takes on attributes of God in Proverbs and Wisdom of Solomon.