Sabbath School for a New Generation

New Blog

2010-01-06T15:29:00.000-08:00

Much has changed in my thinking, which makes this blog somewhat obsolete. When I first started blogging, I was interested in posting notes about religious topics because of my role as a Sabbath School teacher in my local Seventh Day Adventist church. Because of areas of significant disagreement with the church, I doubt I will be allowed to return to that role. The new blog will discuss my thoughts about interesting events, books, and ideas. I am interested in science, religion, philosophy, and technology and I may include auto-biographical material as well.

For reference on my past thoughts, all posts will be archived on this blog as long as Google desires to host it. The views presented were my views at one point in time but may not reflect my current thinking. Additionally, the words you read on this blog will reflect my views at the point in time they were written. I reserve the right to change my mind at any point in the future. My new blog can be found at http://journeyofaperpetualstudent.blogspot.com/

A review of Samir Selmanovic's book

2009-07-31T18:08:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I have posted on my blog. But I thought I would start things off again with a review of Samir Selmanovic's book, "It's Really All About God". I have also posted the review below on Amazon.com and the visual bookshelf app on Facebook.

A friend of mine divides the beliefs of Christians into two types: messy theology and clean theology. “It’s Really All About God” by Samir Selmanovic is a clear example of messy theology in all its glory. And for those of us who have a messy theology, who deal with uncertainty and doubt, who revel in the complex mystery that we call God, this book will be a breath of fresh air.

Samir’s book is part auto-biography and part theological treatise. It is firmly based on a life experience that is rich in its variety. Samir grew up in a family of Muslim heritage; he became an atheist, and then converted to Christianity during his year of military service. He uses different aspects of his life to illustrate each point. One of my favorite stories is told near the beginning. At one point in his pastoral career he became friends with a woman who was Wiccan. He invites her to pray at a religious conference that his church is hosting. It is a charming story of the “other” giving encouragement to a discouraged Christianity.

In his book, he talks about how Jews, Christians, and Muslims teach that we are created in God’s image. God is not confined to one belief system and we cannot control him (or even our own body at times.) In fact it is much too easy to domesticate God and create an idol out of our religion. Therefore we cannot exclude the “other,” those who are not from our religion. For one, God may have called them to share His truth for us. Yes, God can use even an atheist (or a Wiccan) to call us into the Kingdom of God and away from the idolatry of our religion. It has radical implications to how we share our beliefs. Instead of attempting to convert others we dialog with them.

Samir has strong words of warning for religion if it is not able to embrace the other. We are in danger of losing our rich cultural heritage that religion provides. Religion is in danger of dying. On the other hand he is able to see hope in that new life coming from death is a common Biblical metaphor.

Although I enjoyed reading the book, there were times when feelings of guilt would creep in. Any many ways this is a prophetic book that calls those who follow God to a higher standard. There have been so many times that I have been a failure when it comes to communicating and interacting with others and so many times that I have not acted in love to those created in the image of God. And there have been times when for me, it wasn’t really about God.

This story makes me sick

2007-11-28T15:36:00.000-08:00

A symbol of freedom from sin is manufactured in a Chinese sweatshop. Here is an alternate veiwpoint from the Catholic News Service. So what should happen next? Kernaghan of the National Labor Counsel (author of the report) says:

"Following a thorough investigation, St. Patrick's and Trinity should work together with the Association for Christian Retail to clean up the Junxingye factory in China and implement concrete steps to guarantee that the legal rights of the young workers will finally be respected," he said.

"Pulling production from the factory would only further punish these young women, who have suffered enough already," he added.

Best quiz yet

2007-04-30T17:09:00.000-07:00

From Pastor Greg's blog comes the best quiz yet. I am sure by now you know which super hero you are, which car you are most like, and your kindrid Harry Potter spirit. Now you can find out which church father you are most like.

You’re St. Justin Martyr!

You have a positive and hopeful attitude toward the world. You think that nature, history, and even the pagan philosophers were often guided by God in preparation for the Advent of the Christ. You find “seeds of the Word” in unexpected places. You’re patient and willing to explain the faith to unbelievers.

Find out which Church Father you are at The Way of the Fathers!

Archeoporn

2007-03-05T07:28:00.000-08:00

Your word of the day is Archeoporn. This word sums up the documentary "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" where a couple of filmmakers claimed that they had found Jesus's grave with Jesus's bones. It was applied to this documentary by Dr. Reed, during an experts panel after the show. Dr. Reed is a co-author of In Search of Paul, which is an excellent book that I have discussed earlier. This of course fits with Simcha Jacobovici's method. He takes a bunch of highly unlikely interpretations and strings them together in a format that titillates more than informs.

My biggest complaint concerned their "statistical" analysis. It was very ad-hoc with very little rigor and the assumptions weren't explained well and they may or may not have been valid. Additionally if you assume for the sake of roundness that there were only 60,000 families, you would expect to see this cluster of names in 100 tombs. So overall it was a very weak argument.

Additionally they linked their ossuaries to the James ossuary, an alleged forgery. The ossuary is real, but the inscription is suposedly a modern addition. It turns out that one of the 10 ossuaries that were found in the Talpiot Tombs went missing. The film claims that the James ossuary is the missing ossuary. Since the inscription is a forgery, it would cast into doubt all of the inscriptions if there is in fact a link between the ossuaries.

Overall the film, while it was about two hours in length, could have been presented in 15 minutes. In fact there wasn't much new information that wasn't contained in their original media circuit on the Today show and others.

Jesus' tomb???

2007-02-27T09:39:00.000-08:00

A couple of film makers have claimed to have "discovered" Jesus' tomb. James Cameron, of course, is famous for that one movie that made about $2 billion. The director is Simcha Jacobovici who recently made the documentary, Exodus Decoded. I saw this on the Today show yesterday as well as on Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

I am planning on watching it, but I don't expect a very high quality product. The problem is Simcha Jacobovici has a reputation for making sensational "discoveries." These usually involve looking at the evidence (you might call it twisting the evidence) in a very different way than what is accepted by scientists. He will leave out evidence that contradicts his "hypothesis" and build a very convincing story based on a part of the data. The atrocities are documented in this review of Exodus Decoded, which also includes a dialogue with Simcha Jacobovici, so read the whole thing. However I think this quote sums it up nicely.

By the end of the film I grew weary of the piling-on of amazing discoveries. Each one is historically dubious and requires a willing suspension of disbelief.

I expect this upcoming film will have many of the same problems.

Update: I forgot to mention one small detail. The tomb they claimed to have discovered wasn't empty. In the tomb there was a box labled "Jesus son of Joseph" and box labeled "Judah son of Jesus" along with a box attributed to Mary Magdalene.

Inconvenient truth

2007-02-27T06:57:00.000-08:00

I watched An Inconvenient Truth this weekend. Al Gore has put together a stunning and compelling picture of the danger our planet faces. The Oscar was well deserved. At the end of his movie, they list a website that gives suggestions on how to reduce our carbon footprint. Many of these ideas make sense from an economic perspective and not just environmental. For example, riding my bike to work saves me $1 - $2 a day depending on the price of gas. Additionally, I am hoping it will save on my healthcare costs down the road. Some of these ideas have already been implemented in my household and some still need to be done.

Evolution Vs. Creationism

2007-02-15T14:17:00.000-08:00

Here is an interesting compilation of videos featuring scientists and their view about Evolution and Science and Creationism.

The video below is the section on peer review and how the process works.

Preparation Day

2006-12-27T16:40:00.000-08:00

Another interesting factoid. Looking over the number of site visits to this site by day of the week, by far, the biggest day is Friday. It has been the largest day of the week for the last month or two. I don't know if this is true for other Adventist blogs as well.

Left Behind Controversy according to CNN

2006-12-20T17:49:00.000-08:00

CNN has an article about the violent video game. The amount of violence and hate promoted by some segments of Christianity is amazing.

How do readers stumble onto my site?

2006-12-18T17:08:00.000-08:00

I don't know about the rest of you bloggers, but I like to check the "By Referrals" tab in sitemeter to determine how people find my blog. I've noticed that most people stumble onto here looking for information about the 3ABN scandal. I think I have only written one post onto that. The most interesting path to my blog? Somebody asked google, "How could they reject my ICASSP paper?" That is a question that I have asked myself multiple times. Actually I probably have more posts about rejected ICASSP papers than 3ABN. I wonder why I don't get more hits from those posts?

Biblical Archeology

2006-12-18T16:35:00.000-08:00

I've read several books that said the archeological record doesn't support the Israelite invasion of Canaan as portrayed in Joshua. Most recently, I just finished reading The Bible Unearthed. It is a very engaging work with some interesting ideas. It boggles my mind that this insignificant nation produced a book that is now the world's most popular and influential. The authors claim not only was there no Exodus (or at least it didn't happen like it is portrayed in the Torah), but David was only a chieftain of a fairly small tribe and the kingdom of Judah really didn't form until shortly before the time of Josiah.

They concentrate most of their book on describing the Deuteronomist history, so while Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings are covered in depth, they don't say much about the rest of the Old Testament. Of course these are the primary historical books. (Chronicles is basically a re-hash of Kings, written from a post-exilic perspective.)

According to some, the thesis of this book is not widely accepted among archaeologists. Since I am not an archeologist and I don't know anybody who is, I am having a hard time verifying that claim. Is this a claim put out by those who believe in inerrancy only or is their enough evidence that it is supported by a wider group? Does anybody have any good books on the subject that they can recommend?

Jaroslav Pelikan

2006-12-13T18:26:00.000-08:00

For information about the history of the church, I can't think of a better author. My first experience with his books was when I purchased Jesus Through the Centuries from a used bookstore. This was probably my earliest step towards post-modernism. It was after reading this book, that I began to realize that my interpretation of the life of Jesus was not the same as somebody who lived 300, 500, or 1500 years ago. Each generation has interpreted the incarnation in a way that spoke best for that generation.

My next encounter with Dr. Pelikan occurred during my time as a student missionary in Russia. As a side job, I agreed to help Michael Kulikov (Junior not Senior) put together the end notes a Russian translation of volume four of The Christian Tradition: a History of the Development of Doctrine.

Finally this summer, I purchased his book Whose Bible is It? It was a good book. I didn't enjoy it as much as some of his other works, but I highly recommend it. In it, you will learn how the Bible came to be the document we know today. You will learn the importance of the Bible to the printing press and the importance of the printing press to the Bible. I think the highlight of the book was his observation that during the time when critics were dissecting the human elements of the text and minimizing its significance (its only a myth), the Bible was inspiring more of humanity than ever before with its wisdom.

Unfortunately, Dr. Pelikan passed away this past May. To learn more about him, you can check out what Wikipedia has to say.

Unbelievable

2006-12-12T15:04:00.000-08:00

I now know why many call it the World Nut Daily. World net daily is reporting that soy products cause homosexuality. This has been adequately ripped to shreds by Pharyngula. It's amazing the nonsense people believe. The article reminded me of some key scenes involving a nut ball air base commander in a certain Stanley Kubrik movie, "Dr. Strangelove."

WWU

2006-10-04T09:10:00.000-07:00

So WWC has now become WWU. I'm not sure what the point of the whole exercise was. I find a university to be a much larger, colder, less personal place than a college. In my mind it has a more negative connotation.

Problems with Prophecy

2006-10-01T20:47:00.000-07:00

Carlos Espinosa brings up a good point about Adventist interpretations of prophecy. His thesis concerns the statue in Daniel 2. Our traditional interpretation is that the head is Babylon (specifically called out in Daniel), with the other portions of the statue representing Persia, Greece, and Rome. Our church has maintained that there will be no significant empires after Rome. As Carlos points out, there have been several empires. He names Byzantine, the Arab empire, and Turk Ottoman empire.

Historical evidence does not support the assertion of most traditional Adventist writers that no other world empire would exist after Rome until the second coming. This brief survey makes clear that claims to the contrary are wrong. Any unbiased reader of history can follow the sequence of empires in biblical lands and other parts of the world until the twenty-first century without finding any hint that Rome was the last empire.

The fact of the matter is that our notions of prophecy are very Western centric. You will notice that most of our interpretations center on Europe and the United States. The world is quite a bit bigger than that. Don't you find it funny that we say almost nothing about China and India. Each of those countries have a population around a billion people. Each one of these countries has a population that is larger than the US and Europe combined. Additionally our interpretations only consider Catholics and Protestants and ignore the Orthodox church, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. Our ideas about prophecy seem to have been inherited from the wars between Catholics and Protestants, when Protestants were using the Bible to demonize their opponents. They have not been updated to our time when we have greater knowledge and contact with other cultures.

If we want to reach the entire world with the message of Christ’s second coming, we cannot allow factual errors to hinder our credibility. If we retain those errors, we run the risk of being perceived as a sect, a small group that accepts some doctrines by faith (based on the magisterial authority of their religious leaders) despite their incompatibility with the factual evidence.

Additionally if we want to reach the entire world, our interpretation of prophecy must be inclusive to the whole world.

Another voice against litmus tests

2006-09-08T15:49:00.000-07:00

Bob Rigsby writes on Spectrum Magazine's website:

Of all the comments made in the midst of a doctrinal disagreement, (the 1844/sanctuary doctrine, this quarter’s Sabbath School topic, perhaps the biggest one of all) ones like this puzzle me most:"If you don’t believe the doctrine as traditionally held, it might be best—more honest even—just to leave the church…go someplace which is more closely aligned with ’your’ beliefs." (For examples, see the Adventist Review, July 26, 2001, 28; Nov. 28, 2002, 13; July 24, 2003, 29; and April 28, 2005, 17.)

Amen. I also like his concluding paragraph, but I highly recommend the whole article.

The tension thus generated also illustrates well for me why I take seriously the fact that I am an Adventist. Accepting that label obligates me to the process of wrestling with truth in ways that both remain loyal to the work and struggles of our spiritual forefathers, while at the same time remaining true to the vision of truth as perceived in my own conscience. Loyalty to the people and the process of early Adventism, however, need not obligate me to their every conclusion—as they themselves often demonstrated. Thus, the task of being an Adventist is, in large measure, to participate respectfully in an ongoing quest for ever broader and deeper understandings of truth, but undertaken with a humility that recognizes our fallibility and yet honors our God.

Let's not forget the past, but let us move forward. Most Adventists of the more liberal persuasion like the moving forward, but we have a tendency to want to forget the past. The Great Disappointment, investigative judgement, and Ellen White are a large part of our history and we shouldn't sweep it under the rug. I would perfer instead to reinterpret in a way that makes sense to us today. I think Sherman Cox expresses some of these ideas very well on his site Adventist Pulpit. For example you should read what he has to say about the Sanctuary Message. But as we move forward, let us also remember that we will make frequent mistakes along the way. And that's okay.

The end never justifies the means

2006-09-08T10:48:00.000-07:00

Those who know me, know that I am a huge fan of The Lord of the Rings. One of the major themes that runs through the whole series is that the ends never justifies the means. This was lost in the movie, but the cause of the downfall of Saruman and Denethor was their use of the tools of evil to bring about good. It was also a constant temptation for Gandalf and Aragorn.

I strongly believe in this as well, which is why I am very strongly against torture under any circumstances. No matter how bad that person may be. It is also why I am concerned when religion becomes involved to closely with politics, especially political parties. A point that was made quite well in this article onTalk2Action.org.

As a grinning Ralph Reed has stated many times publicly, it's not important what people think about you, only that you operate quietly in the background and achieve your goals by any means necessary. What American Christian voters should be asking themselves is, "Are our values truly being heard, or are today's Republican Right simply pretending they are hearing us in order get our votes, remain in power, and instead continue their pro-corporate and pro-militaristic agenda?"

There are many more examples of people who instead of working for Christ are now working for the Republican party. It is also a cautionary tale as those of us who are progressive and Christian are banding together and working to effect change in America.

Good Commentary by Alden Thompson

2006-08-31T10:04:00.000-07:00

You should check out what Alden Thompson wrote on Spectrum Magazine's Sabbath School Commentary. He discusses the identity of the little horn. While I tend to be agree with those who say that the little horn represents Antiochus Epiphines, he has some good points. For example one of the reasons why it can be hard to identify which symbol represents which bad guy, is that they truely do all look the same. Here is a key quote where he extends the metaphor Opus style:

But that’s also why the story turns scary here, for we can be so eager to pin the right label on horns and beasts that we forget to look in the mirror and recognize ourselves as potentially close relatives of the beast.

Bicycling

2006-08-31T09:10:00.000-07:00

Just after I started my new job, I purchased a bicycle with the intention of using it to commute to work. My main goal was to get excercise in a convenient manner. Of course, I haven't had to purchase as much gas, so there are other benefits to this as well.

It is interesting what I have learned while riding my bicycle. I knew that people are willing to take risks when in a hurry, cutting people off, speeding, and swerving in and out of lanes. The dynamics are different when you are on a bicycle. I no longer have a ton of metal and glass between me and that speeding swerving car. People are taking risks with my life so that they can get to work 1 minute faster. In truth there is only one part of my route that is a problem and I don't think that there is an alternate that is better. Fortunately it only lasts for about a block.

But here is a friendly reminder from a bicycle commuter. If you are passing somebody on a bicycle, be considerate and give them lots of room. If you don't have room to pass them, wait until you do. And for those of you interested in bicycle commuting it is an easy thing to start and they are plenty of good resources about it on the internet.

Dark Matter

2006-08-25T11:19:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post, I discussed the work of Mordehai Milgrom. Well it turns out he may have a higher hurdle to clear in order for his work to be accepted. There have been some new observations that seem to confirm the existence of dark matter. A good summary of the experiment is at Cosmic Variance. I encourage all who are interested in Physics to check it out. As much as I dislike dark matter (it seems like a kludge to me) it seems to be supported by the best facts we have so far.

3ABN and train wrecks

2006-08-23T09:56:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure what attracts humanity to scandal. A coworker had a train wreck analogy which he applied to Paris Hilton. You know what is going to happen, nothing can be done to avoid it, and there will be a big crunch at the end. I'm sure there is a similar dynamic going on in our Adventist sub-culture when it comes to some of the recent events of 3ABN. Adventist Today pointed out that they receive a lot of traffic because people are looking for information about the divorce and re-marriage of Danny Shelton. They have published a series of letters, which confirmed some of the rumors I have heard from both points of view. (Confirmed meaning that the rumor is based on the actual point of view of the affected parties.)

Now I don't have the time or interest to figure out what really happened, but I thought the letters provided a good example of some of the pitfalls that a ministry can face if it is too tightly controlled by a dominant personanility. In the event of mistakes there is usually not a good procedure to address and resolve it. According to the Doctor's letter the investigation into the matter was more white-wash than substance. Part of the allegations touch on the tight control Danny Shelton has on his ministry. This issue was touched on by Ron Corson on his blog, who found Danny's response less than satisfactory.

Boycott of Tyndale?

2006-08-22T12:52:00.000-07:00

This is a story that I have been following somewhat. Tyndale has licensed a video game version of the Left Behind series, which has caused quite a bit of controversy. For those who haven't heard of it, one of the aspects of game play is that players go around New York converting heathens or killing them if they refuse to convert. (Or if you want to you can just kill them, but you may have to pray to improve your score in the game.) According to Talk2action.org, a boycott of Tyndale is being initiated because of their involvement in producing this game. In the story they have links to previous articles related to this game. As Monte Sahlin said in a recent post about James Standish, "Nowhere have Christian standards fallen so far as in regards to war and peace."

Church Growth

2006-08-03T16:35:00.000-07:00

Monte Sahlin has a post about the correlation between a congregation's willingness to change and church growth. He talks about two specific examples, use of internet technology and also electric guitars in worship.

The last few weeks my wife have been attending the local Spanish church, which is a perfect example of willingness to change. It is a very large church with a lot happening. They had a praise and worship style service, which my wife and I had never seen in a Spanish church before. Most Spanish churches are much more conservative than their English counter parts. The first thing we noticed was that there are a ton of children in the church. However more surprising was the number of people in the 18 to 40 age bracket. In comparison, my in-law's church has a very bi-modal distribution with quite a few children and lots of old people but not much in between.

The local church has also realized that the younger generation may not speak Spanish well, if at all. These same young people aren't usually as comfortable in the English churches. (Not as true in California, where churches tend to be ethnically mixed.) So the church has translation services as well, which is one of the reasons that we tried the church out, since I don't really speak any Spanish at all. It seems like they have some very active and innovative out-reach activities. I will keep you posted as I learn more about them.

Atoday on the IJ

2006-07-25T13:35:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, Atoday is doing a special commentary on this quarter's sabbath school lesson. The series is well done with several different viewpoints represented. However one of the comments to the editor really irked me.

So, if those who don't believe that 1844 is even supported in Scripture, they need to be honest and get out of Adventism. There is NO middle ground on this.

I've heard this from many different people on several different issues. Cliff Goldstein made a similar comment concerning Creationism/Evolution. It's reproduced here, but I believe the original article was in the Adventist Review.

Unfortunately it is not that simple. If I could only join a church if I agreed with all of its doctrines, the only church availiable to me would be the First Church of PerpetualStudent, which is definitely not the best option from the spiritual growth and nuturing perspective. There needs to exist room in any healthy church for discussion and possible change and there definitely needs to be room for a healthy disagreement.

Peer Review Revisited

2006-07-21T10:46:00.000-07:00

Earlier, I discussed some of the difficulties of peer review and how much I dislike it when people try to invoke a conspiracy to explain why their paper wasn't accepted. This particularly happens among Creationists and ID proponents. This last week, I read an article in Discover that talked about Mordahai Milgrom, who has proposed a rather controversial reformulation of gravity. His proposal would totally alter our concept of gravity and cosmology. Of course he has had trouble publishing his ideas, but through effort and research and several tries, he was able to finally get all of his original papers published in The Astrophysical Journal. At this point, it is too soon to tell if his ideas will gain wide acceptance.

I would have more respect for the Discovery Institute, if they followed this path of doing research and attempting to publish it. However they have chosen to try to have their ideas included by launching a PR offensive. This is not how science is done (if you consider ID science.)

Global Warming

2006-07-16T23:01:00.000-07:00

The topic of global warming has been going around the Adventist blogosphere (see Spectrum Magazine and Ryan Bell's site.) I am sitting here watching a Discovery special on the subject, hosted by Tom Brokaw. Although I was already convinced, I had no idea just how overwhelming all the evidence is. Glaciers are melting, sea level is rising (estimated at 4 to 10 inches in the last 100 years), and carbon dioxide levels are at the highest they have ever been in thousands of years. Also carbon dioxide is highly correlated with global temperature. The implications are quite frightening. However I think Americans are starting to wake up to the danger and that gives me hope. Documentaries such as this one and Al Gore's movie are contributing to this as well as over-the-top movies like The Day After Tomorrow. Hopefully this will lead to more action.

Book review: Misquoting Jesus

2006-07-14T14:21:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Bart Ehrman's book, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. The title of the book is probably the most provocative portion of the whole book. In fact I refused to buy it for just that reason. The book store is full of fantastical "history" that has no basis in reality (i.e. Holy Blood, Holy Grail and many of the books on the Gnostic Gospels.) This book is not one of those books. However there wasn't much that surprised me either. Maybe that is because my Bible has footnotes that point out variant readings and seperates out whole segments that aren't in our earliest manuscripts (like the story of the woman caught in adultery.) So I am familiar with some of these issues.

There are several types of errors, which are discussed. In Bible class at the Adventist schools that I have attended, we discussed errors that were simply mistakes (skipping a line, mispelling a word, or writing a line twice.) However some of these changes were intentional. Scribes would change the wording so that it made more sense to them and sometimes they would change the wording because they didn't like what it said. For example they would take a text that implied that Jesus was only human and changed it to highlight his divinity.

The book is also somewhat biographical. Dr. Ehrman believed in the doctrine of inerrancy. This belief led him to the study of Biblical Languages and the development of the texts of the Bible. That study convinced him of the error of inerrancy (much to his own surprise.) At this point he considers himself to be an agnostic.

I would recommend the book for anyone who wants to more about the history of how the Bible came to us. You don't have to agree with all of his conclusions about what the changes mean, but it is important that we understand the human factors of how the Bible came to being.

Moving is crazy

2006-06-14T19:47:00.000-07:00

So this is the first time that I have had any time to "play" on the computer. The whole moving process has been taking up a lot of time, but we love it here in Oregon. If things settle down, hopefully I can update the blog on a more regular basis.

Last Sabbath

2006-05-09T09:13:00.000-07:00

This last Sabbath, May 6th, was a milestone. It was my last Sabbath School class. I kept it fairly informal. I was hoping to just recap why I started the class and what I feel is important. Unfortunately, I ran out of time to cover everything.

That night we had my graduation party. About thirty people attended, including some family (most of my family will be attending Graduation Party: Oregon Edition), a couple of friends from school and church members. I do have to share one of the funniest gifts. I got a retirement fund from my Sabbath School class.

So I know longer have to worry about my future!

Adventist Carnival

2006-05-09T09:08:00.000-07:00

Michael Arcand on Abundant Rest beat me to the Adventist Blog Carnival. I have been busy lately, since my life is in full transition. So maybe its better that somebody else is spearheading this. I encourage you all to participate. The deadline for submissions is May 14.

In the news

2006-05-02T08:27:00.000-07:00

My wife and I have been staying in a hotel for the last week (looking for a house in preparation for our move.) Of course almost all hotels have at least one 24 hour news channel. I have been amazed at just how much racist hate has been filling those news stations. Some of it is being expressed by the news anchors. Fox news, of course, is the worst offender, but even CNN has been intolerable. I thought we as a society had come a long way since the civil rights movement, but I guess I was naive.

Peer review is hard

2006-04-20T11:27:00.000-07:00

I am working on a paper for an Electrical Engineering journal that covers some of my work in my dissertation. I have experienced peer review for conferences, which is hard enough. The flagship conference in my field is ICASSP, which has about a 50% acceptance rate. Some prestigious journals have acceptance rates lower than 10%. The peer review process is not perfect. Good papers get rejected and bad papers are accepted and just because a paper is accepted doesn't mean it will make an impact on the field. Reviewers are busy and grumpy people and they can be pretty brutal if they don't like your paper.

Receiving rejections are never fun and we have all had at least one paper rejected. I had an interesting discussion during my last conference, with other participants about rejected papers. I realized that I am not alone. One question we ask is why was the paper rejected. In every rejection (I have had five so far), the reason the paper was rejected usually had to do with either the presentation or my idea hadn't been fully developed yet. Most of my rejections occurred early in my work, because I was still unlearning some bad writing habits.

The easy way out is to just blame the reviewer or invoke a conspiracy. This is what Robert Gentry has done. Several years ago I read his book, Creation's Tiny Mystery. He spent most of the book criticizing the scientific establishment, which really turned me off. The truth of the matter is that he was making extraordinary claims that would overthrow 200 years of scientific work. However his evidence was not strong enough for that claim. In fact, there are simple explanations of the phenomena that he observed that don't require overthrowing the current paradigm. In addition there are some problems that have been noted in his research methodology. None of these issues have been adequately addressed on his website. The only exchange he publishes is with Institute for Creation Research, a creationist organization. But rather than explain why his idea is better, he very poetically constructs conspiracy theories.

Change of focus

2006-04-20T11:21:00.000-07:00

I changed the description of this blog to better match reality. I would still like to engage in discussion on questions and issues, but I haven't been able to provide many lesson plans or outlines. Additionally, I will be teaching my last Sabbath School class on May 6. Soon after that we will be moving. And I may or may not be teaching at whatever church we end up at, depending on their needs. I highly recommend the following sites for commentary on the Adult Sabbath School lesson.

Drop out nation

2006-04-19T14:23:00.000-07:00

My wife was watching Oprah today (we TIVO them). This particular show was on the American School system. The statistics are disturbing. Only 70% of students graduate from High School. I had no idea it was this bad. As Adventists we tend to be stuck in our own world. We have our own schools, so why should we care about the public school system. In fact in areas where the schools are bad, the Adventist schools are full to capacity. So we, as a church, have benefited from this.

When I was a student at WWC, I would volunteer at the elementary school behind the girls dorm. I remember they had some budget cuts and had to lay off needed teacher's aids. They couldn't get any of their bond measures to pass in College Place, a town full of retired Adventists whose kids are all grown up. Nobody cared about the quality of the school system there.

If you want to get involved with this problem, Oprah promoted a website in her program which you should check out. This is a serious problem that needs to be addressed.

Take a look at these pictures

2006-04-19T09:29:00.000-07:00

on Pharyngula's website. He has an article about the embryonic development of bats.

Truth and relativism

2006-04-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

This morning I found a link on AdventistPulpit.com to the Adventist Theological Society's website. So I spent some time reading some of the articles. Many of the articles seemed to be attacking either post-modernism or science and after awhile they started to get repetitive. There didn't seem to be much diversity of opinion. This was especially true for Perspective Digest. It seemed that many of the attacks on post-modernism were based on a straw man view of the results of post-modernism. The worst example of this was in article by Francis Beckwith and Gregory Koukl. Their summary of the flaws of the relativism in post-modernism, states that

What kind of world would it be if relativism were true? It would be a world in which nothing is wrong, nothing is considered evil or good, nothing worthy of praise or blame. It would be a world in which justice and fairness are meaningless concepts, in which there would be no accountability, no possibility of moral improvement, no moral discourse. And it would be a world in which there is no tolerance.

Moral relativism produces this kind of world. The late Dr. Francis Schaeffer's remark could well apply to relativists, who "have both feet firmly planted in mid-air."

In fact, very few relativists are suggesting such a world. A fact that was suggested in a much better essay by Larry Lichtenwalter. He recognizes the common perception of post-modernism by many conservative Christians.

The postmodern approach to morality is all too often associated with the celebration of the supposed emancipation from moral standards and the disavowal of moral responsibility. We are witnessing, some assert, "the demise of the ethical" and the transition to an era in which we are placed beyond moral duty.

However this is not happening in reality.

But the collapse of belief taking place in postmodern society does not, it turns out, result in a collapse of morality. Quite the opposite. According to Anderson: "The early postmodern years are bringing, instead of collapse of morality, a renaissance of searching for principles of life that we variously call morals, ethics, values."

This is what I have observed as well. Post-modernism recognizes that we are all creatures with pre-conceptions and biases. We recognize the limits on our ability to ascertain "absolute truth." Some would go so far as to say that there is no absolute truth. It does not negate the existence of a culturally-conditioned truth and following that truth is still important for each individual. Post-modernism at its best humbles us as we share our truths with others.

Myspace

2006-04-14T12:34:00.000-07:00

Awhile ago, I saw a video clip that made fun of Myspace users. At the time I had no idea what Myspace was. Well it turns out that Myspace is so big, that even Ellen White has an account (found on Spectrum Magazine's Adventist Blog Roundup).

The War on Easter

2006-04-14T11:56:00.000-07:00

I have seen an uptick of online advertisements from this group, which has decided that they will use Easter to promote their view that Jesus is not a real person. It turns out that the Religious Liberal noticed it as well. In addition they are doing some more aggresive forms of advertising.

They've been having folks leaflet churches around the country and when possible hide copies of the movie, The God Who Wasn't There in the pews or on the church grounds. It copies the tactics of many evangelicals in spreading the word, which is why in the end the effort will only serve to alienate people.

As with much of the other efforts by atheists, they concentrate most of their criticism towards fundamentalists.

The film itself is a criticism of fundamentalism, with a mix of some scholars which doubt the existence of Jesus historically. Such a view point, is rare in NT scholarship, though such a debate doesn't have as much bearing on the Christian religion as some might imagine.

Sometimes I wonder if the most vocal atheists are people who grew up in conservative Christian churches. Just like the most vocal opponents of Adventism are those who once were members. It would explain why they have a complete lack of familiarity with other Christian thought. For example much of the arguments on the Skeptics Annotated Bible website assumes that all Christians believe scripture to be inerrant. In reality the percentage of Christians who believe that doctrine are fairly small. I find the arguments presented on the SAB to be unpersuasive, but it is a handy reference in certain cases. Of course the counter arguments are just as unpersuasive, because they also assume that the Bible is inerrant.

Christian Blog Carnival

2006-04-14T11:29:00.000-07:00

This is an example of something I would like to set up for the SDA community. This is an example of a very active Christian Blog Carnival. They are already up to 117 issues.

On the TV

2006-04-13T17:03:00.000-07:00

So a chunk of ice from a passing jet just punched a hole in the roof of the Drayson Center at Loma Linda University. Loma Linda is under a major flight path (I am not sure if they were talking about Ontairo or LAX.) It could be either.

This is too cool

2006-04-13T16:38:00.000-07:00

For those of you are into Legos and the history of computers, I found this site featured in IEEE Spectrum (the trade journal for electrical engineers.)

Haloscan

2006-04-11T13:04:00.000-07:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog. We shall see if I can finally get this trackback thing figured out.

Interreligious dialog

2006-04-11T12:59:00.000-07:00

from the Emergent Church perspective. This covers some of the same ideas in the John Cobb book that I am reading in a summarized and much simplified manner.

How I became a Postmodern

2006-04-10T12:16:00.000-07:00

I grew up in an Adventist family and I have attended Adventist schools my whole life except for graduate school. Of course Seventh Day Adventists are extremely concerned about truth. We talk about the "Sabbath truth" for example. Our history is full of ordinary people who spent thousands of hours studying their Bible to find truth. Our church has come up with doctrines that we use to describe and summarize what was found. The SDA church is a thoroughly modern institution and somehow I became a post-modern.

Now some may argue that I tainted by the evil influences of "the world," that dark place of sin and iniquity. And maybe their right in their own way (although I wouldn't characterize the world as a bad place, since I enjoy living here even with its problems.) In looking back over my life, there is one key moment that started my transition away from modernism. It happened the year that I spent in Russia as a student missionary.

One of the key differences between modern and post-modern thinking is how truth is viewed. While the modern believes that their is an absolute truth that is true for everybody. We can find (or approach) this truth through objective reasoning. Meanwhile the post-modern believes that all truth is conditioned on our experiences and biases and culture. So there is no absolute truth.

When I went to Russia, I strongly believed in the structure of doctrine that we as a church had built up. I thought given the same evidence two people who were both objective observers would come to the same conclusion. However talking to my Russian friends made me realize that the conclusions were based on the starting point. And while my starting point was the individualism and rationalism based on scripture, their starting point was based more on the importance of community. Russia has only been lightly touched by the enlightenment, efforts that were largely started by Peter the Great. Also because of the greater contact Russia had with Asia, they are a hybrid of east and west. Now, when I started trying to look at things from their point of view, something interesting happened. The results that I came up with were more similar to the Russian Orthodox Church than my own Adventism. So at one point I said that Adventism and Orthodoxy were the most internally consistent segments of Christianity, but I started to have doubts about the nature of truth.

So I struggled with the concept of truth and how do we know truth. I thought I was all alone until I started reading about the Emergent Church and then I realized that I wasn't the only person asking these types of questions. The best answer that I found to explain my experiences was found in post-modernism.

Disturbing

2006-04-08T12:17:00.000-07:00

So I went to the baptism of a friend of a friend today. She has had no support from her church and the pastor refused to give her the baptismal classes. He did end up baptizing her, but you could tell that he wasn't excited about it. Now I don't have the pastor's side of the story, but I find the whole episode a little upsetting. If somebody wants to commit their lives to God, it should be a time of rejoicing and celebration. Even with all of that, she is now a baptized member of the Seventh Day Adventist church. So we can celebrate that!

Big news

2006-04-06T12:19:00.000-07:00

I passed my dissertation defense.

Nightmare number 3552

2006-04-04T22:16:00.000-07:00

Seen on PhD comics. This actually almost happened at my qualifying exam.

Dissertation Defense

2006-04-04T11:31:00.000-07:00

I will be defending my dissertation on Thursday at 10:00 am. So all of my work comes down to this one little hour. I feel confident but a little nervous. My research has looked at how to robustly (few errors) find the locations of acoustical sources (people talking) using a bunch of microphones. The algorithm that I developed can find the locations of two people who are talking at the same time, even if one person is talking softer than the other. The problem is called source localization and the math involved is very similar to the math used for RADAR, SONAR, and medical imaging applications.

Two kinds of relativism

2006-04-04T09:26:00.000-07:00

Growing up I remember hearing about the dangers of relativism and if you walk into any Christian bookstore you will see shelves of books that preach on the same danger. However, there are different types of relativism and while one of them does have dangers, I find the other to be useful. I found a passage in John Cobb's book "Transorming Christianity and the World" (you know the one that I am currently reading.) In chapter six of the book he says,

The fundamental divide between the relativism I affirm and the relativism I oppose lies in the conclusions drawn from the conditionedness of all thought. I interpret this to mean that all apprehension of the world is perspectival, fragmentary, and in some measure distorted. To me this means that the first step in the improvement of thinking is awareness of these limitations, the examination of some of the conditions shaping thought, and attention to what others see from different standpoints. This makes possible revision of the initial apprehension. Of course, the revising is also conditioned. There is no overcoming of conditionedness, but there is a movement toward less fragmentary and less distorted perceptions.

So each of us has a partial view of the world that is informed by our own experiences. My experiences of the world are different than yours. I have my own predjudices and biases, which cloud my view of the world. As Paul says "Now we see through a glass darkly." But I can overcome these biases by truely listening to those around me. For example, I had a friend in High School who was Native American. I would not have understood the negative effects of European immigration, if it weren't for her. Of course I will never be able to get to the point where my view of this world is unobstructed.

The other interpretation of this situation emphasizes that not only does each way of apprehending the world express the given conditions, but every reason that can be provided in favor of one or another apprehension presupposes the standpoint of that apprehension. The result can be called "conceptual relativism." For the conceptual relativist, reflection necessarily occurs within a given frame of reference, and there is no way to bridge the chasms that lie between alternative systems of concepts.

This view is very pessimistic and I think the functional difference is one of optimism and pessimism. The second view is very pessimistic about our ability to even talk to others about the world.

Such a view can have positive effects. It works against cultural arrogance and imperialism, encouraging instead mutual tolerance....

Nevertheless, the belief that there is finally no justification for one's ideas tends to weaken the hold of those ideas and to inhibit acting upon them when such action is costly. The belief that those who oppose the direction one favors are equally justified and unjustified in their opposition, that there is no court of appeal beyond the sheer difference, reduces one's incentive to press for public action expressive of one's views.

So the second view leads to apathy and is the view most often demonized in the conservative Christian literature. And while they do have a point, there are other responses that would be more helpful.

It was only a matter of time

2006-04-03T12:42:00.000-07:00

before I ran across blogs of people I knew in a past life, but lost track of them. So yesterday I found Walter and Ted. Two people I knew at Walla Walla College and Auburn Adventist Academy. They are both married now. I knew about Ted, but hadn't heard that Walter was hitched.

So would you let an atheist join your church?

2006-04-02T11:18:00.000-07:00

And I am not talking about attending your church. Would you let him become a full voting member? I found an interesting article about an atheist who became a member of a Presbyterian church. Although this article was written on April Fool's day, it is not a joke. I found a link to it on StreetProphets.

While I believe in the importance of dialog (which involves listening and learning on our part), I would have difficulty giving full membership to an atheist. However at the same time I find it disturbing how often Christians demonize the atheist. Frequently atheism is a reaction to an abhorrent or inadequate God. Sometimes that reaction comes about because they were taught about a hateful God, who will strike people dead if they look cross-eyed. Sometimes its because the God they read about in the Bible is evil, condoning slavery, ordering genocide, and slaughtering millions of people. The truth is atheists are not bad or evil people. They are just trying to make sense of their world just like us.

ID as Bad Theology

2006-03-31T10:57:00.000-08:00

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I thought ID was bad theology. My point was that ID is setting up "a god of the gaps" which could be harmful to faith as those gaps become better understood by science. Henry Neufeld has a slightly different take. First he talks about the differences between science and theology and he shows that ID is fundamentally theology. However as a theology it performs poorly

This takes me to the current mini-flap about an article Rumors of Angels: Using ID to Detect Malevolent Spiritual Agents. Scientists quite properly laugh this out of scientific court. But why would ID advocates avoid it? The intelligent designer is not specified. ID is not supposed to be a religious concept. So what difference does it make if the designer is an alien, and unknown intelligence from the stars, an angel, a demon, or God Almighty?

But that article has underlined the problem, because we clearly see that ID cannot distinguish between these various possibilities of a designer, because it is trying to demonstrate design in those little places where some external intelligence (rodents of unusual size, perhaps?) might tinker with life in an experimental lab. It’s precisely because they are not looking for design in the traditional sense that most Christians accept theologically, that this kind of thing cannot be excluded. Evangelical theologians would not be proposing angels and demons as agents of creation. But ID doesn’t really have a defense against it.

Of course this observation is not new. In fact a whole pseudo-religion has been constructed to satirize ID. The church of the flying spaghetti monster has proposed that all these evidences of design proove the existence of their god. So ID cannot choose between an earth created by God, an earth created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or an earth created by evil demons. There logical arguments say that all three options are equally valid. I am surprised that Christians want this taught in public school.

Wow its just like a blog carnival

2006-03-30T19:16:00.000-08:00

I found this article on the Spectrum Magazine website. So Spectrum is starting to monitor and link to Adventist blogs. So in addition to one of my recent posts, they mention other blog entries, including "just nod if you can hear me ...", "Kevan and Life", and others.

But it also reminded me that I have strayed from my original purpose. I haven't put up any Sabbath School materials lately, so I guess I need to be better at posting those outlines. I am in charge of Sabbath School this weekend, so hopefully I can be a little more organized about it than usual.

Witnessing in a pluralistic setting

2006-03-29T13:35:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am reading a book by John Cobb, "Transforming Christianity and the World." So I have finished reading the first three chapters. In the second chapter he talks about dialog between religions. He proposes that we stay open to truth even if it comes outside of Christianity. In the process of dialog, we are changed, but so are the people we are talking to (if they are also open to truth.) To me this is the core of witnessing. In my experience, I have found a truth that is helpful in living on this earth. For example, I find Sabbath rest to be a very helpful truth that I can share with others. But I shouldn't be so arrogant to assume that I have all truth and the people I am talking to have none.

Of course Cobb takes this further, but then again he is not really talking about witnessing but dialog between religious groups. He gives an example of a dialog between Christianity and Buddhism, something he has a great deal of experience in. He proposes that in the process of dialog the two religions will become closer. Christianity will be become Buddhized and Buddhism will become Christianized.

I must admit that at first this struck me as a little out there until I thought about it further. Religions are not isolated, eternal constructs. They change as culture changes and as they come in contact with other religions. Did you know that Judaism (and by extension Christianity) learned about Satan from the Zoroastrians? In fact as you read about the Zoroastrians, you learn that we also obtained our ideas about the end of time and heaven from them as well. So during the exile and post exile the Judaism changed. Christianity for the most part was changed by its contact with Neo Platonism (immortality of the soul.) This is something that we as Adventists have rejected. But I don't think you will ever find an Adventist willing to give up our end-time beliefs and the Great Controversy, which were acquired through Zoroastrianism.

I am sure that God has been more active in the world than we give him credit for. He has been active in leading Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddists, Zoroastrians, and others to the truth. It is something we should be open to as we talk about our faith with others.

How evil am I?

2006-03-28T14:50:00.000-08:00

Okay, I enjoy reading most of the blogs on the Science Blogs website. Found on Afarensis, who in real life is an anthropologist, is a blog quiz.

You Are 24% Evil

A bit of evil lurks in your heart, but you hide it well.

In some ways, you are the most dangerous kind of evil.

How Evil Are You?

Draw your own theological conclusions.

Cool brain fact

2006-03-27T15:02:00.000-08:00

Have you ever heard that we only use 10% of our brains? It turns out that it is a myth. However, I ran into a little factoid from Carl Zimmer. He researched a claim that he found in a press release about a bioengineer at Stanford.

According to Boahen, the brain is capable of performing 10 quadrillion (that's 10 to the 16th) "calculations," or synaptic events, per second using only 10 watts of power. At this rate, he says, a computer as powerful as the human brain would require 1 gigawatt of power.

My laptop runs at about 60 Watts and isn't nearly as powerful as the human brain. The speech recognition software on my computer can barely keep up with my speech. But it is only translating the speech signal into text. The computer has no understanding of what all those words mean. Yet my brain can recognize what somebody is saying and understand the meaning while regulating my breathing, making sure I keep my balance, identify interesting objects in the room, contemplate what I am going to cook for dinner, etc...

Carl Zimmer researched the 10 watt claim and it turns out that while this is a low figure, it is within the ballpark. According to the Neuroscientist that he talked to the figure is closer to 15 watts. Still less than a lightbulb. Now of course the other claim has to do with the number of calculations, which was addressed in the comments by Harlan.

Also, it's really a mistake to equate synaptic events with calculations in a computer. Synaptic events are much, much simpler. When computer scientists talk about a "calculation", they usually mean an amount of computation that takes one clock cycle, which might be to add two long numbers, or decide if one number is bigger or smaller than 0. To the extent we understand what computations synapses compute, they're probably, at least mostly, small portions of an addition. The simplest model of a neuron basically computes "if the sum of the average firing rate of my input neurons is more than X, fire". Any single synaptic event affecting that neuron is likely to be one of probably thousands of such events that is involved in that computation...

But that doesn't take away from the fact that our brains are truely amazing organs. A modern desktop can perform several billion operations per second (10 to the 9). And if it takes a thousand synaptic events to equal one floating point operation, then our brain is still over a 1000 times more powerful than the top of the line desktop.

Inspiration

2006-03-27T12:33:00.000-08:00

Somewhat related to some of the talk about Ellen White as a prophet, is how does inspiration work. There was a discussion going around several blogs about slavery in the Bible. If slavery is bad and the Bible is the word of a Good God, why does the Bible allow for it and in some cases encourage it? It started on Ed Brayton's blog, Dispatches from the Culture Wars, where he discussed one of the reasons why he can't accept the Bible as God's Word. The conversation has been summed up quite well by Henry Neufeld

First, the starting point argument could be summarized as follows:

1. Slavery is immoral
2. The Bible condones slavery
3. God or God's word cannot condone something immoral
4. The Bible therefore cannot be God's word.

He agrees with points 1 and 2. His response to the dilemma is to agree that the Bible is not equivalent to God's word, although he maintains that the Bible is inspired.

My own response which deals with the relationship of the Bible to the concept of God's word. There's an unstated assumption almost everywhere in this discussion that the Bible and God's word are either equal or unrelated. My argument comes in here and is simply this: The Bible is a human-divine cooperation, and therefore shares imperfections of the human element. There will be things in the Bible that we do not want to implement today.

I think as Adventists, our struggles with Ellen White have prepared us well to engage in dialog about what to do with the difficult parts of the Bible. We have seen how inspiration worked in the recent past. We can vividly see how the Human and Divine interact. If we assume God is unchanging and he works in the present approximately the same as he did in the past then maybe the Bible was put together in a similar fashion. Alden Thompson articulates many of these ideas very well and in fact Henry's post is influenced by Alden Thompson and he references Alden's book, "Who's Afraid of the Old Testement God."

By the way, I highly recommend Henry's blog. He has some very useful articles on God as Creator, Inspiration, and the Bible.

Ellen White: Who needs her?

2006-03-17T00:45:00.000-08:00

I saw a post awhile back on Adventist Pulpit about the disappearance of Ellen White. It is something that I have noticed as well. And it has taking awhile before I finally decided how I would respond. He starts out

One Sabbath school teacher stated that: “We use Ellen G. White too much almost deifying her!” One might also hear: Or “Adventists must overcome their legalism!” I think it interesting that we accept these assumptions without critically looking at them. Such sentiments are often never challenged.

I think this statement may have been true at some point. But now, the pendulum has swung and in most churches she is rarely mentioned.

What if our basic assumptions are wrong? What if lawlessness is at least as big a problem as legalism in the church today? What if it is not that we use Ellen White too much, but hardly at all? What if instead of “worshipping her” as we are charged with we ignore her?

I doubt you will go to many churches tomorrow and hear Ellen White quoted more than the Bible. In fact you might hear Billy Graham or Martin Luther quoted more than Ellen White. I think it interesting that some think that Ellen White is deified in the church while at the same time we hear her less. Is the prophet disappearing or have I just attended the few churches that seem to downplay her?

What do you think?

Now here is what I think. First of all, as Christians, I think we have funny ideas about prophets and prophecy. Somehow we got this idea that prophecy is about the future. However if you look through the prophets in the Old Testement most of them are talking about the present. And even when they are talking about the future it is firmly related to the present and issues of the day. They are calling Isreal to a higher standard. If you look through Ellen White's writings she is calling the church to wake up and realize the importance of its mission. She is calling us to a higher standard. It makes us uncomfortable and we don't like it. Of course neither did Isreal. The prophets weren't the most popular bunch around.

Our second funny idea is that prophets never make mistakes. Of course this is based on Biblical texts that were written to guard us against following false prophets. Usually the Biblical example of a mistake that I use is the story of David and the prophet Nathan, who had to backtrack after telling David to build the temple (2 Samuel 7). Ellen White used external sources without properly acknowledging them. To put it bluntly, she plagiarized. She wasn't an academic and she only completed a few years of formal education, so I don't hold it against her. She made mistakes.

Our third funny idea is that prophets are respected members of the community. Check out Ezekial 4. Laying on one side for over three hundred days, the other side for fourty and during this time eating bread baked on human excrement. Not exactly sane behavior. This sort of behavior is like the environmentalists that tie themselves to trees to prevent logging of forests. It is generally frowned upon by comfortable church members. In many ways, Ellen White was a radical as well. She believed in functional dress that looked quite strange and was very unfashionable (A skirt with loose pants underneath). Many of her ideas about health were also on the cutting edge at her time.

We as a church almost deified her (which she wouldn't have appreciated) and now we ignore her. I have noticed that in my Collegiate Sabbath School, many of my kids know very little about Ellen White. It is sad, if for no other reason, she was the most influential founder of our church. So by ignoring Ellen White, we are ignoring our history. Without our history, the beliefs of our church make little sense. It is like the Luthurans deciding they should never talk about Martin Luther or the Methodists sweeping aside the Wesleys. So who needs Ellen White? Seventh Day Adventists everywhere do.

Alden Thompson has written a couple of books about Ellen White, Inspiration, which I have read and Escape from the Flames, which I have not had a chance to read. These books treat her in a very positive light. I also found Ronald Numbers book, Prophetess of Heath, to be quite informative. It comes from a more neutral perspective, although later editions include a more negative slant on her life in an afterword.

Libraries

2006-03-15T15:32:00.000-08:00

One of my earliest memory as a child was going to the public library with my mother. I couldn't even read, but I enjoyed those trips. Ever since then, I have always loved libraries. Every town that I have lived in, I got a library card and visited the library frequently. I even worked at the Walla Walla College Library for a couple years while I was a student there. Now that I am coming to the end of my graduate studies, I have realized that I will really miss the library here at USC. They have at least five seperate libraries that are all bigger than the one at WWC and then several smaller libraries spread out through campus.

So I have checked out many books on such subjects as Science, Religion, Philosophy and Politics. Currently, I am starting a book by John Cobb called "Transforming Christianity and the World: A Way beyond Absolutism and Relativism." I chose the book because of the subtitle. As a post-Modern I am uncomfortable with Absolutism, but as a Christian I am uncomfortable with Relativism. So I can't wait to hear what he has to say on this subject.

Wish I could have been there

2006-03-14T12:51:00.000-08:00

As an alumnus of Walla Walla College, I like to check in to see what is going on. Well, I found an article about a discussion forum that took place over there. They were discussing relevance of the church and I wish I could have been there.

Bauer started out by mentioning two things she appreciates about Adventism. First, "someone will know someone you know" anywhere in the world. Even in her time in New Zealand, she met people who knew Karl Haffner. Second, the Adventist community is an intellectual one. As an intellectual person, Bauer appreciates questioners and explorers. But, she says, "One area I wish Adventism would become more relevant is in the area of spirituality." When Dybdahl guest-lectured in one of her classes, he mentioned that Adventists discuss doctrine, but teaching people to be spiritual is "a very different arena." Bauer wonders if Adventists really know how to fast, pray, or find a "rapturous relationship with God."

That sums up my thoughts on the church. Some of the other portions of the article talked about inter-generational interaction. I agree it is important to have, but I know from my Collegiate Sabbath School, that is important to have programs for just a certain age group.

Habakkuk 3

2006-03-13T12:27:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading God: A Biography by Jack Miles. In this book, he takes the book order of the Tanakh (The books of the Old testament, but ordered differently) and analyzes the character development of God. The ordering of the Tanakh is roughly based on the order that the books were originally written. So Torah (the first five books) were written much earlier than Chronicles, which are the last two books in the Tanakh.

Interestingly, God has a very large presence in Genesis and Exodus, performing all sorts of miracles, like flooding the whole earth, the ten plagues, and splitting the Red Sea. However, by the time you get to Esther, God is not mentioned at all and it is the actions of the Jews, mainly Esther and Mordecai, that save them from annihilation. So what do we make of this transition. Did God stop performing miracles and wonders? Why? Did he lose interest? Did he decide that these large miracles and wonders don't work? Or maybe these stories became exaggerated over time and they never happened?

And this is where Habakkuk comes in. Habakkuk is roughly in the middle of the transition from activity to no activity. He has heard all the stories of how God intervened in the past and he sees the chaos of his own time.

O Lord, I have heard of your renown,
and I stand in awe, O Lord, of your work.
In our own time revive it;
In our own time make it known;
in wrath may you remember mercy
--Habakkuk 3:2 (NRSV)

He has read or heard all these stories about God and he is praying that God intervene in his time. He talks about the splitting of the Red Sea, the destruction of Egypt and Midian, and the Sun standing still. But even though God, for a reason unknown to him, is choosing not to intervene on behalf of Israel, he still says,

yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will exult in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
He makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
and makes me tread upon the heights.
--Habakkuk 3:18-19 (NRSV)

Like Habakkuk, I know God exists and He cares and I will continue to worship Him. Even though He chooses not to act as He did in the past, even if those stories may have been exaggerated, I will continue to worship him. This is not some irrational stance, because like Habakkuk, I know that God does give me strength.

Assisted suicide and abortion

2006-03-10T11:09:00.000-08:00

I found a good article about Oregon's death with dignity law on the Spectrum Magazine website. Scott LeMert, an assistant to the Oregon Conference President, ends his article with this thought.

... In retrospect, Oregon’s Death with Dignity vote appears to have been more a cry for help than a threat of mass communal suicide. The Master once said, "When I was sick you visited me"; might he have really meant, "and when I was dying you bravely took time to journey with me."

Perhaps it was said best by the dying Morrie Schwartz when on that last Tuesday his shallow voice requested of Mitch one last petition: "hold [me]." And then he added, "[you] touched me, [pause]…here [pointing to his heart]…this is how we say goodbye."

I think this relates to abortion. Christians are very good at judging and condemning women for getting an abortion. Christians are downright aweful when it comes to helping the mother and the child after the child was born. As Randi Rhodes puts it, "They love the fetus, but hate the child." The same people who are restricting access to abortions are the very same people who are trying to dismantle our social welfare system. When faced with a rhetorical question, "A building is on fire and you have the choice to save either a two year old child or a petry dish with a human embryo, which would you save?", a conservative radio host chose the embryo over the living child. Such attitudes appear in our church as well. At the one point where a woman needs the most help, we turn her away, because she's pregnant and single. We gossip and point and ostracize her. If the church is truely pro-life, we will do everything to help single mothers to raise their children. This is much more effective than trying to ban abortions, as many states are currently attempting.

Blog Carnivals

2006-03-09T16:41:00.000-08:00

One of the interesting offshoots of this whole blogging phenomenom is the blog carnival. Now up to this point most of the Adventist blogging community has not really connected in any meaningful way. I had found a few blogs that I would check every once and awhile. But there were many more that I had never heard about. So in the interest of promoting more dialog and discussion, I think we should set up an SDA carnival, a Carnival of the Sabbath-Keepers. If there is enough interest, I am willing to organize it. I'm thinking that maybe a once-a-month carnival could be done.

Intel and Dialog

2006-03-09T13:04:00.000-08:00

As I have mentioned before on this blog, I am finishing school. Starting in June, I will be working at Intel in Hillsboro, OR. This is actually old news, that I have never put on the blog.

So I was poking around on Yahoo! finance checking out how their stock was doing. I accidently looked at the message board without a flame retardent suit. You have two groups of people (three if you count the spammers hawking porn and other products.) One group believes that Intel makes horrible products and it will soon crash and burn in the dust of history. The other group believes that AMD (Intel's primary competitor) should just kneel and acknowledge the eternal supremacy of Intel. The "dialog" is about the same as you get from many Christian sites. On a message board discussing the attributes of a particular stock, it can be kind of funny (although the humor wears out quickly.) However as Christians we are called to witness and the best way to witness is through dialog about our faith with those around us. We become so convinced of the truth of our position that we start bashing people around us. And just like that message board, we have not convinced or reached out to anybody.

True dialog and true witnessing cannot occur when we believe we have the absolute truth. But what does it mean to witness? I find it easier to think about these things when taken out of the context of religion, because to often talk about religion is loaded with worries about heaven and hell. If I get it wrong, I will roast in hell. However I have had other experiences that are similar to witnessing. Presenting a paper at a conference, for example, is very similar to witnessing. I have come up with an idea that I am trying to share with others. Some of these people may be opposed to my idea. However, I have found that I learn more by being challenged and listening than if I had just stayed home and thought up even grander ideas. So witnessing is sharing our experiences of God with others and what we learned from it. But it also includes listening and considering other ideas. Not only will we learn something new, but we will have gained a friend.

Witnessing

2006-03-02T09:13:00.000-08:00

I hate witnessing and evangelism. Of course, I may have misunderstood what witnessing was all about. justpastors has a good post that helps bring witnessing into proper focus.

Committed Christians usually get the knowledge part fine. We know our Bibles and are avid readers. Many of us have non-Christian friends with whom we interact mostly in a casual way. Now, when it comes to “do evangelism,” we suddenly become hunters in search of targets. Like Alex, the lion of Madagascar, those who are our friends or neighbors, become meet, living targets. We get into the winning souls mode.

Witnessing has always seemed so fake to me. It seemed like I was being told that I needed to become "a slick used car salesperson for Jesus". On the other hand, "just being friends" always seemed like a copout.

As Tim Sanders says (and btw, he’s a Christian), share your knowledge with your network out of compassion, out of love for them. Don’t look at them as a target, a goal, a baptism. Get to know them. Love them and they will love you back. It is in that stage when talking about Jesus becomes natural for both parties.

To me it says don't sweat it. Witnessing is something that comes naturally when we are truely in love with Christ and truely love our friends.

Finally a review of Blue Like Jazz

2006-02-28T10:53:00.000-08:00

It has come to my attention that I promised a review of Blue Like Jazz, which I never got around to writing. As Adventists, we are very good at coming up with doctrines. If the Bible says A that means B and if the Bible says C, we have D. And when you put B and D together you get E. For example, vegetarianism is not really discussed in the Bible (outside of an oblique reference to the time before the flood.) But yet it is a very Biblical doctrine. And I am getting a little side-tracked here, but the point is that Adventists tend to be very cerebral and logical about our faith.

Miller's book is a jumble of anecdotes and stories. If you don't look too closely, there is a logical progression of sorts. The book is very entertaining and humorous, but of course then he will you surprise you with some deep thought. In my favorite story, a Christian group of students at Reed decided to put together a confessional booth for a festival on campus. This festival consisted of mainly large amounts of drugs, alcohol and partying of all sorts. The twist was that the Christian group confessed the sins of Christianity. I thought it was a very powerful story.

His book has very little doctrine. It is mostly just experiences about God and how God has worked in his life. It was helpful for me to remember that Christianity is about a relationship with Jesus and not just a bunch of doctrines.

Latest News

2006-02-27T10:23:00.000-08:00

So this morning I woke up to find an e-mail from my dissertation advisor, telling me to go ahead and schedule my defense. So he seems to be happy with the dissertation, although I still have a little work to put in to it.

Speaking of Blogroll

2006-02-26T20:57:00.000-08:00

I am on a blog roll. This will be my third post of the day. Now I should be working on my dissertation, but I am having a few motivational issues. It wasn't helped by having a large infusion of blogs to read through. One of my goals for this blog was to share Sabbath School material with others, in hopes that Sabbath School will be more meaningful. Of course I have now learned that there are several other people out there doing the same thing, only better. For example, Pastor Greg,has an excellent post about family unity.

Back in Roman times, after all, one of charges laid against Christians was the way they subverted “traditional family values.” Christianity undermined the authority of parents, people said. Christianity weakened the ties of marriage, people said. Christianity encouraged children to revolt, women to think for themselves, and men to lose all sense of honor, dignity, and even patriotism.

It reminds of In Search of Paul, by Crossan, which I review here. Roman society was very male dominated. If you read Ephesians 5:21-33, as a Roman would have read it, it is quite shocking. It starts out, "Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ." Of course today, our society is more egalitarian, which makes Pauls words seem much less radical than they were. In response to a preceived threat to the family, "Wives be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord (Ephesians 5:22)" is frequently interpreted by conservative Christians to justify inequality. Later, "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church...(Ephesians 5:25)." If anybody thinks husbands are getting off easy, please read your Bible again to see just how Christ loved his church.

Adventist Blogroll

2006-02-26T18:33:00.000-08:00

So I ran into another Adventist blogger online, David Hamstra, who listed about fifty Adventist blogs. Wow I'm glad somebody was keeping track of all us out here (He calls us Sevies). So he inspired me to actually start up a blogroll. I had an account with blogrolling.com but I never did anything with it. So my blogroll has all the sites he listed, plus I added Monte Sahlin, which is the only Adventist blog that I have been checking on a regular basis.

If you have a blogrolling account, you can import this list onto your own blog roll. The instructions are located here and my OPML URL is http://rpc.blogrolling.com/opml.php?r=d179d77c30291f8653ff3467444088a2
Hopefully this will help get something started.

Adventism and Postmodernism

2006-02-26T16:49:00.000-08:00

The Adventist church began and developed during the peak of modern thought. It is a thoroughly modern institution. So when I came across the website for the Center for Secular/Postmodern Mission, you can say I was skeptical about its effectiveness. How ready is our church to adjust to the postmodern reality around us? Although it will take time to see what results from this outreach effort, sometimes I wonder if it would be easier to just start from scratch. However James Coffin wrote a good defense for sticking with the denomination. Anyway, I have added their website to my useful resources list and I recommend that you check it out. So far most of their material has been gleaned from other sources, but I think they are off to a good start.

Is Intelligent Design good for Christianity?

2006-02-03T17:30:00.000-08:00

There is a recent article on the Association for Adventist Forums website on intelligent design. It is well worth checking out. However I don't think that the author goes far enough. He does acknowledge that ID is not science, but thinks of it as good religion.

However, ID does more harm than good. It sets up a God of the gaps that can be dangerous. The most common example is the so called "irriducibly complex" systems. The argument is basically that these systems could not have been evolved, so therefore they must have been designed. However science is learning how these structures could be evolved, thus leaving less room for God to operate. It would be much better to just reject science altogether, then to try to use weak, psuedo-scientific arguments, to prop up your faith.

It has been harder to keep up

2006-01-17T21:28:00.000-08:00

with the blog. I am trying to get my dissertation done by May and I am also looking for a job, so updates might come rarely for the next couple of months.

Blue Like Jazz

2005-10-19T11:08:00.000-07:00

Well, now that I am finished reading about Paul, I have started reading Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller. As a preview, here is his authors note.

I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.

After that I liked jazz music.

Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.

I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened.

And sometimes I have to quote what other people write, because they say it better than I ever could. Well, I will give a full report when I am done reading the book.

So what kind of church do you attend?

2005-10-18T16:46:00.000-07:00

Interesting "interview" on the ooze. So why do you go to church? The "traditional" church that he describes is a caricature of most church services that I have been to. I have never been to his "NT church," but it sounds interesting. I can see how spiritually engaging it could be. At this point, I am tired of coasting and I want a meaningful church. Fortunately, I am in a position where I can make changes. Our pastor is very open to suggestions. But even if those changes aren't made church-wide, my Sabbath School would also benefit from them. These are things to think about as we plan ahead.

The article also has a link to a discussion, but you have to be a member of the Ooze (it's free) to read it.

Book Review: In Search of Paul

2005-10-18T13:54:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading In Search of Paul by John Crossan and Jonathan Reed. Overall it was a heavy read, but I learned some interesting things. Paul uses metaphors that would have made sense to people of that time. However he takes themes common in Roman Imperial theology gives them a twist. For example a common theme was Ceasar Agustus was a god, who saved the world by giving it peace through victory. He was a conquering king. Jesus was savior of the world, but he did it by becoming a servant. Quite a contrast. Whereas Rome preached peace and victory, Paul preached grace and peace. Peace was acheived using much different methods.

One interesting note concerns 1 Thessalonians 4:16-18 (RSV).

16For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel's call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; 17then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord. 18Therefore comfort one another with these words.

This text is closely modeled on the practice of greeting important dignitaries visiting a city. Say a king is coming to town. The city officials would meet the king outside the city and accompany him into town. In addition most cemetaries were located just off the road outside a city. So Paul uses this metaphor of greeting the king to describe what the end of time would be like. Now I have heard many Adventists argue that this text says that Christ won't touch the ground, but we will meet him in the air. However the text itself is ambiguous and if Paul truely meant to base his discussion on a common practice of his day, I don't think we can assume that this text says what we think it says.

The book contains a heavy dose of descriptions of Roman society, archeology, and the writings of Paul. I had trouble focusing on certain sections, but overall I am glad I read the book. Learning about Roman society also helped me to understand Revelations and also early church history. You can see how Roman ideas about patronage resulted in veneration of Saints.

Process vs. Free Will Theism

2005-10-17T18:24:00.000-07:00

I'm revisiting this subject. As you may remember, I recently reviewed a book on this topic. Well, here is David Larson's take on it as well. David Griffin articulated ten points that describe what is process theism. David Larson maintains that traditional free will theism can agree with nine of these points.

Without hesitation, qualification or equivocation, traditional free will theism can and should affirm 9 of the 10 "core doctrines" of process philosophy as identified by Griffin. These are:

1. "The integration of science and religion into a single worldview."
2. "Hard-core commonsense notions as the ultimate test of the adequacy of a philosophical position."
3. "Whitehead’s nonsensationist doctrine of perception."
4. "Panexperientialism."
5. "All enduring individuals as serially ordered societies of momentary ‘occasions of experience.’"
6. "All actual entities have internal as well as external relations."
7. Please see below
8. . "Doubly Dipolar Theism."
9. "Cosmological support for the ideals needed by contemporary civilization."
10. "A distinction between verbal statements (sentences) and propositions and between both of these and propositional feelings."

The seventh is

Although there is a divine actuality that influences human experience and, in fact, all finite beings, this divine influence never involves an interruption of the normal pattern of causal relations, being instead a natural dimension of this normal pattern.

This seventh point is basically about how God can intervene in the world. Anyway, read the whole article. I found the discussion of supernaturalism and miracles especially intersting.

Update

2005-10-13T19:11:00.000-07:00

Well, it has been awhile since my last post. Anyway, I found some new web-sites that seem intersting. First is Ponder Anew. This the website of David Larson, a professor at Loma Linda University. Also of interest is the website for the Center of Secular/Postmodern Mission.

Those crazy sea mammals

2005-09-15T11:30:00.000-07:00

According to a recent article in the LA Times, Newport Beach is having a terrible time with all these sea lions running around. They pulled a fairly typical freshman prank, as in "Hey let's see how many people we can crowd onto a boat.

Tonight, the Harbor Commission will discuss the situation, which took on added urgency after 18 sea lions piled onto a 37-foot sailboat this month and sank it.

Veritas Forum

2005-09-13T16:57:00.000-07:00

I found this website with quite a few mp3 files of various talks by Christian speakers. I just finished listening to "Rethinking Relationships," with Don Miller, who is the author of Blue Like Jazz. It was quite entertaining, but also helpful. He talks about the relational aspects of religion. This is very important and I frequently lose sight of it.

Here is the summary of the talk from the Veritas website:

Donald Miller is the author of Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality and Searching for God Knows What, in addition to articles written for numerous magazines. He is a frequent speaker on issues concerning the relevancy of Christ to the human struggle. Miller also leads an a small campus ministry at Reed College, which had the recent distinction of being ranked one of the "most godless" colleges in the country.

Wesleyan Quadrilateral

2005-09-12T11:24:00.000-07:00

This weekend in sabbath school we discussed the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, which is based somewhat on the teachings of John Wesley, although the name was only created for it about thirty years ago. The quadrilateral includes Scripture, Reason, Experience, and Tradition. Reason, Experience, and Tradition are all used to interpret scripture. I have run across it several books that I have been reading lately, so I thought it would make an interesting discussion. Here are a few articles that I dug up while preparing this lesson.

Book Review: Searching for an Adequate God

2005-09-08T12:24:00.000-07:00

It is hard to summarize the ideas presented in this book to fit in a short post, so I will do my best. This book takes the form of a debate, between Free-Will Theists and Process Theists. Free-Will Theists typically come from an evangelical background and Process Theists are a subset of liberal, mainstream protestantism. Despite the difference in their backgrounds, there are many ways that both of these theories about God are similar. Both try to answer the question, "If God is All-Powerful and God is good, why does evil exist?" They both answer the question by limiting God's powerfulness. In the Process model, they describe two methods that God could use to bring about change in the world. The first is persuasion and the second is cohersion. Process thought would maintain that cohersion is inconsistent with a loving God. Free-will theists are uncomfortable in limiting God in this way, but they do recognize that by giving humans free will and self determination, God has limited himself in what he can do.

If you are interested in why evil exists (known as Theodicy), but are unsatisfied with explanations that you have heard, I highly recommend this book. I especially appreciated the thoughts of Richard Rice (a SDA theologian) and David Wheeler.

Seperation of church and state

2005-08-24T12:28:00.000-07:00

I found an article on the Los Angeles Times website that I find to be very disturbing. It discusses organizations that are training evangelical students to be "Christian" political leaders.

Nearly every Monday for six months, as many as a dozen congressional aides — many of them aspiring politicians — have gathered over takeout dinners to mine the Bible for ancient wisdom on modern policy debates about tax rates, foreign aid, education, cloning and the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

Now this could be a good thing, but unfortunately, too much of Evangelical thought has been attached to the agenda of the Republican party. It sounds like they are searching the Bible to justify the Republican position. Insteading of working towards changing hearts, too many Christians want to legislate morality.

Rules to live by

2005-08-22T14:43:00.000-07:00

We so often try to make our religion simpler by creating black and white rules. People who do A are sinners. We should never do A. However if we operate from a principle of love, we find that many of these rules get in the way. Jesus showed this during his time on earth. Here is a story of an individual who struggled with these same issues.

Seen on The Ooze

2005-08-22T14:29:00.000-07:00

I thought this poem captured some of my thinking on modern Evangelical church services.

Christian Art

2005-08-11T08:34:00.000-07:00

This morning I read an article on The Ooze about Christian Art. Specifically art at the White Stone Gallery.

Those “inspirations” found her scrambling to find Christian artists who not only demonstrated a contemporary mastery of their mediums but a passion to express their Christian faith through their works of art.

“I thought Christian art was all angels holding puppies,” she admits. “I didn’t want that, and I didn’t want the stern, severe iconic art. So I started looking around for something that fell into contemporary Christian fine art. It was a hard look, and it slowed us down.”

So after reading the article I checked out the galleries website and there is some good stuff there. For art, it seems fairly conservative but the artists are all talented and very good at presenting their message. I have enjoyed looking at Cornelis Monsma's work, I have posted a sample image of his painting called "Holiness." Beside each painting is an explanation of the inspiration (usually a Bible Text.) The text for this work was 1 Peter 1:15-16.

But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”

Book Review: Postmodern Christianity

2005-08-09T14:23:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading "Postmodern Christianity" by John W. Riggs. It was a very concise overview of postmodernism and how Christianity relates to it. He argues that Christianity has always used concepts borrowed from the philosophical discussions of the time. So for example most of the traditional views of God are based on Greek philosophies. Postmodernist philosophy teaches that ultimate claims about reality do not make sense. Dr. Riggs points out that if this is the case then theology and ethics no longer make sense. He then uses the work of Hartshorne and Ogden to base his view on how Christianity should respond to postmodernism and then uses these concepts to illustrate how we should respond to several issues like gender relations and abortion.

I found the book to be a fairly easy read. Chapter four is the highlight of the book with the previous chapters leading up to it. One thing I did not realize is that the views of the religious conservatives that "Life begins at conception" is very recent. For most of Christianity's existence the church has been against abortion, but not because abortion was homicide. In thier view abortion was a form of birth control and sex without the purpose of procreation was bad.

Overall the book was good, but I am sure there are better works that talk about Christianity in a postmodern world.

Seen on the Panda Cam

2005-08-09T14:01:00.000-07:00

My wife is a big fan of panda bears and so she has been watching the Panda Cam at the San Diego Zoo religiously, hoping to see the new baby over there. We finally succeeded last night and I was able to capture a still of the image (push the Print Screen button and then paste into a paint program.)

Tiny little bugger, isn't he!

Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ

2005-08-09T09:27:00.000-07:00

and you will be saved. This of course was Paul's answer to a jailor who asked, "What must I do to be saved?" (Acts 16). I was thinking about this at Vacation Bible School last Friday. The childern were learning about Paul and Silas overnight stay in prison. What does it mean to "believe in Jesus"? The answer most frequently heard among Evangelicals is that we must believe in a set of propositions. 1. That Jesus is the Son of God. 2. He died for our sins. 3. By his sacrifice we are saved. But this answer is only partially true. To believe in Jesus Christ is to trust him. Trust every aspect of his life on earth, including his teachings. Jesus preached compassion, but how often are we really compassionate to our fellow man. Jesus called us to action, but too often we are passive listeners. Anyway, I am challenging myself to be more compassionate and to do more for others.

Lessons on leadership

2005-08-05T13:52:00.000-07:00

We often forget that we should be leading as servants. This article brings that dimension of Christianity back into focus.

How do we know God exists?

2005-08-05T11:41:00.000-07:00

This is a fundamental question that each one of us most answer in our own way. The problem is there is no "proof" of God's existence. Logical proofs all have their weaknesses and assumptions. If you don't share the assumption of the proof, then the argument quickly falls apart. Examples include arguments from design and arguments from first cause.

Some say that we know God exists, because the Bible said so. But this is also no proof, because the authority of the Bible to speak on such matters would have to be established.

So how do I know God exists? I know God exists because events in my own life and events in the lives of others, show me that God does indeed exist. That is all the evidence that I have, and it is all that I need. Now somebody could counter that I am deluding myself. Or that I have attached meaning to events, that are purely random. However, there are always objections for God's existence, for those who seek them.

Another article on AToday

2005-08-03T11:49:00.000-07:00

Alden Thompson is writing about patience when you feel that the church has not come to the right decision. One thing I noticed about the GC this year is that they seem to be talking about the same things that they talked about 5 and 10 years ago. More involvement for women and young people. Not much has changed, so I tend to get skeptical about such talk, but I have to be patient that some day the church will come to a conclusion on these issues.

Two points about "learning to believe"

2005-08-03T11:22:00.000-07:00

Angela Schafer writes for Atoday:

While doing research for a religion class I came across a Web site made by former Adventists, and I started reading. My heart beat faster, and my throat constricted as I read the accusations that were posed: Ellen White was not a prophet; the investigative judgment teaching had no basis in scripture; the Ten Commandments, and therefore the Sabbath, were done away with at Christ’s death. I was terrified. Although I didn’t want to read, I sat transfixed in front of the computer screen.

These sorts of websites are out there. Most of them are written by disillusioned ex-Seventh Day Adventists. And all of them are written from a fundamentalist perspective on inspiration that is literalist. Most Adventists are aware that such sites exist, but we must understand that even if God has a special purpose for us, we are all still human. So even if I disagree with some of what Ellen White did, I can still appreciate her importance in our church.

She also talks about doubt.

I still have questions, but I think God can handle my questions. I have chosen to believe that God is leading in the Adventist church and in my life. In his book Life of Pi, Yann Martel describes the faith journey of an Indian boy named Pi who embraces Buddhism, Christianity and Hinduism. Pi says that doubt has a purpose, “Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if he burst out from the Cross, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on.”

This reminds me of something I read by Anthony Bloom. The Russian word for doubt literally means "with two thoughts." I will have constructed my answers to life, the universe, and everything, but a new thought will intrude on that construct, giving me doubt. So doubt is and important part of learning, but it should not be used as an excuse to not progress.

Relationship vs. Religion

2005-08-02T10:44:00.000-07:00

I have never said "I have a relationship not a religion." However the attitudes behind that phrase and attitudes that I have had and seen in others are the same. Chris Munroe in an article at the Next Wave Ezine writes:

Many people claim that ‘their’ faith is Christian, when in fact, it is a syncretistic blend of Christianity plus their own personalized, self-authorized theology and ecclesiology. Many brag about having a personal relationship with Jesus, who is their ‘friend,’ their ‘bud,’ their ‘home boy.’ And that’s all good, right? Yet while repeatedly singing of their personal relationship with Jesus, they increasingly lose sight of the corporate and historical implications of their faith.

The Christian faith has spanned 2000 years and had millions of adherants. We can learn from the struggles of other Christians and gain from the wisdom that they learned.

Book Review: Common Sense Christianity

2005-07-29T19:24:00.000-07:00

Here is a book freely available on the internet on Religion Online. Its a very easy read and help explains why liberal Christians believe the way that they do. I disagreed with some of the book, but I particularly liked how he explained what Christianity is all about.

Ross Christian Belief Rule #1: A belief may be considered Christian (i.e., appropriate for Christians to believe) if it is consistent with the Great Commandment and with the centrality of Jesus of Nazareth to our religious understanding.

Ross Christian Belief Rule #2: A belief may be considered required of Christians only if it is necessarily implied in the life and teachings of the Christ or if it is necessary to accepting his message.

So we have all beliefs that are consistent with the Teaching of Jesus, which is rule #1. They may help explain doctrine and what Jesus was all about. This would include such Adventist distinctives like the Sabbath, State of the Dead, and the Sanctuary Message. However a belief is only required if it complies with rule #2. Some examples would be Love for Others and the Golden Rule.

This book is very interesting and will give you much to think on, but it is a little heretical.

The Ooze

2005-07-27T11:40:00.000-07:00

I find a real good article on this new website that I found called The Ooze. I read this

Try as I might, I'm troubled by things like parking lot ministry. I guess I'm just not sure that helping well-dressed families in SUVs find the next available parking space is really my spiritual gift.

after earlier reading this on the Christian Century website

Osteen's book abounds with examples of trivial everyday concerns. Can't get a green light? Pray with faith, and that light will change. Can't find a parking place? Claim God's victory, and see divine favor as someone pulls out and leaves you a space in the front row. Worried that you haven't found the perfect date, someone like Osteen's wife (who is, by the way, praying for us as we read her husband's book, as Osteen promises in an epilogue)? You've guessed the answer by now: pray, stay positive, and God will build up the remarkable list of coincidences to have you meet that special person.

Anyway, the author has highlighted some of my concerns with the Evangelical Mega-Church phenomenon, including the lock-step thinking, consumerism, and measuring successful ministries by how big they are. Anyway the whole article is worth reading and I am going to be spending some more time on The Ooze to see what else I will find.

Book Review: Two by Ron Numbers

2005-07-26T18:24:00.000-07:00

I recently read two books by Ron Numbers, Prophetess of Health and The Creationists. These books were both easy to read. One thing I appreciate about Ron Numbers' writing, is that he is very good at presenting what happened, according to his research, in an unbiased manner.

Prophetess of Health discusses Ellen White and how she came to advocate the importance of good health. I was not disturbed about her plagerism of others work, many other people at that time were doing the same thing. The problem is that she tended to deny the influence of others. In spite of that, I sensed that Dr. Numbers thought highly of what she accomplished. The high point of the book is when he compares her to Mary Eddy Baker.

This book was so explosive, because Adventists have tended to deify Ellen White. She was human like the rest of us. She was not perfect just like the rest of us. This is frequently what happens when an infinite God uses finite people to do his work. Another book about Ellen White, that I highly recommend is Inspiration by Alden Thompson. I have heard that Escape from the Flames deals with similar issues, but I haven't read that book.

The second book traces the history of Scientific Creationism and describes the work of the major proponents. Again he is very neutral when he approaches this subject. I did not realize how influential Adventist thinking was on this subject. But it was the Adventists who led the way, mainly because the six day creation is related to the Sabbath doctrine.

I thought this was a joke when I first read it

2005-07-26T10:24:00.000-07:00

Mel Gibson has developed a thing for doing movies in obscure languages. According to CNN his next movie is going to be in Mayan. I'm hoping that his next movie after that will be performed in Akkadian.

Found on Daily Kos

2005-07-15T18:38:00.000-07:00

I found this diary on Daily Kos, discussing the commercialization of Christianity. I find this trend to be quite disturbing and it is only getting worse. I like to call it "bumper-sticker" Christianity, with the pithy shallow gospel and flashy logos.

Adventist filmmakers

2005-07-08T08:48:00.000-07:00

We've come along way from the naive attitude that all movies are bad and a waste of time. Check out this article about an Adventist film festival.