Staying Awake

Another post generated from a discussion with my son.  We were doing his (our?) devotion for the night.  The subject was temptation.  As we started on the activity part, we had to read Matthew 4:1-11:

One of my favorite lines in the movie Ghostbusters (which frankly, imo, is chock full of little bits of comedic genius) is when Ray says:

Listen…do you smell something?

It is funny because of the mixture of senses within the single sentence and in the movie, it appears that he is not even aware that he is mixing things around like that.  I thought of the line after our Sunday School class (ok, maybe it was actually during it) today.  One of our members was commenting about how God seems to have been so explicitly involved in the world of the OT.  From burning bushes to parting seas, creating floods, keeping believers from burning in a hot furnace, and other examples, God seems to be very present and active in the world.  This kind of culminates with the arrival of Jesus Christ as God actually walks in this world.  And of course, in the process of doing that, many miracles are performed.

But since then, it does not seem like God is actively involved in the world.  Yes, there are reports of miracles occurring.  But for some reason, it does not not strike us as being the same kind of involvement.

Sometimes I’ve wondered if part of the problem is that we Christians are looking too hard.  We become so focused on looking for signs of God that we fail to still ourselves and just listen.  Maybe it’s the same idea we tell those looking for love – it is only when you stop trying so hard to find a boyfriend or girlfriend and instead just live your life, that is when you will find love.  Or at least increase your odds.  Similarly, if we stop looking so hard for God, we may discover that he is at work in the world just as much as always – we just fail to perceive Him.

All of this finally brings me to the point of this post.  Which I’ve been wanting to write for a couple days now – luckily I had not so I was able to make this connection with what happened in Sunday School.  About ten days ago we (that is, me and my wife) had an incident with our son.  He did something at school, not wrong, but troubling.  We talked with him about it and planned to make some changes.  Unfortunately, he then proceeded to engage in some disobedience with our directions, which of course only served to compound the problems. This resulted in him getting grounded.

It also made me do some searching for new ways to deal with him.  To that end, I invested in a couple books from Family Christian Bookstore to see if I’d get some parenting ideas.  One of them is Have A New Kid By Friday, which I am currently reading.  The first one I read was Raising A Modern Day Knight.  Hopefully I can put together a review of that in the next few days.  I will say one thing I really liked about it was the focus on connecting the concepts and ideas to the Bible.

So I am now in the process of implementing some of the ideas in the book.  One of the first steps was asking my son to come up with a definition of what a man is.  He is struggling a little bit but seems to be warming up to the conversations we’ve been having.  Another part of implementing the framework in the Modern Day Knight involved a couple gifts I gave my son.  This past Thursday was his birthday and I gave him a Bible and a journal to use for his journey to manhood that I have him now traveling.

On Thursday night, just before starting our “manhood” discussion and giving him his gifts, we were working on his nightly devotion.  In the middle of the story for that night, we came across this passage:

Strong is about being a man. And being a man means keeping promises.  Taking care of your family.  Walking away from a fight whenever you can. Respecting people, especially women. Honoring the Lord.

So after several days of working on a definition of what it means to be a man, and on the cusp of revealing this manhood journey to my son, right here in the middle of the devotion is a definition of what it means to be man.

Some will write this off to coincidence I’m sure.  But I think if one relaxes a bit and doesn’t try quite so hard, one will perceive that this was God at work in my life and my son’s life.  At just the right time and in just the right way, he revealed something to us that, at least in my case, was part of an answer to my prayers for guidance in dealing with my son.

Just testing a new WP plugin for generating Tweets since my last one mysteriously died.

This week’s Prepared Christian assignment has to do with creeds.  As we’ve been studying the chapter on God the Father, the idea/concept of creeds has come up a few times as we attempt to define the doctrine of God the Father.  One of the things we have learned in our class is that for the early church, most people did not have access to books like the Bible (and may not have been able to read it even if they did).  So, the church had to come up with ways to get everyone on the same page, especially when it came to understanding some of the basic concepts of being a Christian.  So creeds became an important tool in this effort.  Webster’s online dictionary defines a creed as:

a brief authoritative formula of religious belief

Our assignment was to review the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed; identify some common structural elements; and then write our own creed.  Having attended a Methodist church for many years, the Apostle’s Creed was pretty familiar.  That could also be a holdout from attending a Catholic church as a child.  I was also somewhat familiar with the Nicene Creed.  However, I had never run across the Athanasian Creed before (which, btw, fails on “brief”).

Pastor Mark sent us copies of the versions of each of the creeds he wanted us to use. This was a good move as a quick Google search will likely overwhelm you with the different versions that are out there. Looks like the Apostle’s Creed version is the Traditional English Version and the Nicene Creed is the International Consultation on English Texts translation as found at the creeds.net web site. The Athanasian Creed is close to one I found at affirms.org.

I did a little mindmapping as I worked through the creeds and came up with the following (sorry, been trying to figure out how to embed the Freemind file, but it keeps throwing an error when I preview – complains about Javascript and Flash not activated – so you’ll have to put up with PNGs):

Using that, I put together the following outline of some Christian creed attributes:

• Use the word believe. The Apostle’s Creed and Nicene Creed do this more actively.
• All seem to focus heavily on the concept of the Trinity. The Athanasian Creed is very, very focused on this. Probably half the creed is spent explaining this concept.
• God the Father
  • present in all the creeds
  • all use the adjective Almighty
  • references to being the creator/maker of Heaven, earth, all things
• Jesus Christ
  • the only Son of God
  • begotten
  • emphasis on incarnate nature
  • historical perspective of his life on earth
  • he died, was buried, and rose
  • ascended into Heaven
  • will judge us
  • life everlasting is possible
• Holy Spirit
  • Ghost is also used (I like Spirit myself)
  • giver of life (general and in terms of Jesus’s conception)
  • not much else
• Other stuff
  • catholic church
  • communion of saints
  • forgiveness of sins
  • resurrection of the body
  • everlasting life
  • Apostle’s Creed and Nicene Creed set these off; Athanasian Creed seems to incorporate them into the body of the creed

In starting to think about how to draft my own creed, some ideas included:

• use believe as an active verb
• touch on each “member” of the Trinity. I tend to feel the Holy Spirit gets the short end of the stick – any way to change that? I like John 14:26 and the reference to the Holy Spirit as the Helper coming to teach us and help us with remembrance, so perhaps use those?
• As I started writing, I decided the descriptions of the God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit would all start with “who”
• briefly considered structuring it using who, what, when, where, why, and how. That did not last long
• instead of the “other” things being included, ala Apostle’s and Nicene, I decided to go a little different route. I would use the five soli we studied earlier to structure the final section.

So with that in mind, I put together another mind map, this time of my creed:

Finally, converting all of this to a format of a creed that could be repeated yields:

I believe in Almighty God, who is our Father in Heaven and on earth, who created Heaven and earth, who is above us and with us, now and forever;

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, who became man incarnate that he might suffer for our salvation, who died, was buried, and rose from the dead, who ascended into Heaven, and who will judge us from His throne;

I believe in the Holy Spirit, who gives us life, who helps us by giving us knowledge and remembrance of what Jesus Christ taught;

I believe God grants us his grace that we may be saved;

I believe our faith is the path and the means to access God’s grace;

I believe Jesus Christ is our savior that our sins may be forgiven;

I believe in the Holy word of God as revealed through Scripture;

I believe in the Glory of God.

Amen.

A pdf version is available of just the creed.

Was reading up some stuff in A Guide to Prayer and came across two passages in some C.S. Lewis materials that seemed to connect with my blog here.

The first is from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer.  In that, Lewis writes,

We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with him.  He walks everywhere incognito.  And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate.  The real labour is to remember, to attend.  In fact, to come awake.  Still more, to remain awake. (emphasis added)

That just kind of touched me since my blog tagline is about my efforts to stay awake spiritually.  Or as Lewis puts it, “to remain awake”.  That is one idea that came to me when I really started to get more serious on my path to God.  Being a Christian is about more than being awakened to the existence of God and his saving grace.  Once we stir, we have to work to not fall back asleep, not even to nap.  I know there are many stories and passages in the Bible cautioning us to stay awake, some even told by Jesus.  That was part of what drew me to the concept.  I’m sure I’ll write about that some more as I run across these passages (or I could pull out my journal where I made a bunch of notes on it).

Speaking of my journal, I’ll briefly note that I am struggling with an organization problem.  I currently have ideas coming in from three different places – Sunday School (mainly the Guide to Prayer), church services, and now The Prepared Christian class.  I’m wondering if I need to somehow come up with a solution that would put all this material in one place.  Of course, that kind of calls for an electronic solution.  I’m somewhat resistant to that as the act of writing by hand is enjoyable and in some ways, forces me to slow down a bit and give a little more attention to my thoughts.  Been thinking about switching to a larger size Moleskin, but still not sure.

OK, back to the C.S. Lewis connections.  The second is from The Joyful Christian.  The passage, if I can summarize, is about an individual struggling with an experience he had with God and how that fits in with “religion” and theology.  The individual felt like he no longer needed those.  Lewis presents an interesting analogy of a person who takes a walk on a beach and then looks at a map of an ocean.  While the personal viewing of the ocean is very powerful, it does not help one get anywhere the way a map does.  Lewis notes that one benefit of the map is that it has had input from many different people who have all had their experiences and that is now combined to produce the map.  As we studied in our class, one consideration regarding the authority of The Bible is the number of people who have helped write it (over many centuries, cultures, languages, etc.).  So in a way, The Bible is similar to the map in helping us understand where to get to and how to get there.  And it has the benefit of all these shared insights as opposed to a single person having written it.

A few minutes ago I finished up our nightly devotion with my son.  Tonight’s lesson was about integrity – doing the right thing even when no one else knows about it.  My son seemed to really struggle with understanding what moral dilemmas and difficult decisions are.  Not sure whether that is good or not.

Anyway, part of each night’s devotion is an activity.  Tonight’s was an exercise to unscramble a verse using a key that was provided (I guess it is more breaking a code than unscrambling).  The verse was Psalm 119:11, which in his KJV read:

¹¹Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.

Or, using my ESV:

¹¹I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.

Seeing the word, “word” in there immediately brought to mind John 1:1 for me:

¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Since we’ve been doing a lot of studying recently about words and THE Word, I found the Psalm passage to be one of those that jumped out at me as contemporaneous.  And, I don’t recall running across that particular passage in our lessons, so it was one of those “new” connections.  I’m sure there are many, many more instances of this through The Bible since The Portable Seminary can only hit the primary examples.

One of the things I like about the passage is how it connects with John 1:1.  And if I think about having the word in my heart could also be taken to mean having Christ in my heart.  I also like the idea of having Christ and God’s word in our hearts will help us not sin.  I think in my case the more time I spend in the word, and in studying the word, and with the word, the easier I find it to resist temptations.  Even to the point where some temptations aren’t really even temptations any longer.  I think it also makes it easier to engage in more wholesome or peaceful or productive activities and pursuits.  It is just an all around good thing!

A few weeks ago, Pastor Mark put together some images that could be used as computer wallpaper.  It listed the five solas (soli?) that we studied as the core of evangelical Christianity. [Aside - inerrancy of Bible and personal conversion, the short definition - I still remember!]  I’ve got it on all my computers at home and work.  Except one – the iPhone.  Finally took the time to sit down and convert it into format that would work on the iPhone.  Thanks to Mark for the original artwork that served as the basis.  Now I’m rockin’ with five solas on all computers.

This week for my Christianity study, Pastor Mark gave us an assignment focused on Isaiah 40:6-7 (ESV):

⁶A voice says, “Cry!”
And I said,”What shall I cry?”
All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
⁷The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the LORD blows on it;
surely the people are grass.

In our last chapter that we studied, we covered several literary conventions and how they are used in the Bible. Looking back through my notes and the chapter, the following conventions are what I’ll analyze the passage for:

• literal speech
• figurative speech
• simile
• metaphor
• parable
• allegory
• symbolism
• prophecy
• poetry

Not real sure whether prophecy is really a literary convention along the same lines as simile or metaphor. To me, in the list above, it stands out from the rest as not being a convention that is applicable to any other writing. So it is not so much a literary convention as a Biblical convention. But since it was covered in our lesson, I’ll at least consider it anyway.

Literal speech. By literal speech, the question is whether the passage can be read literally. That is, with the simple, well-understood plain meanings of the words. The passage records the vision of Isaiah. To the extent that it is recording “history” I think it can be read literally. This really is the vision that Isaiah experienced. The only exception might be the first line, which could be figurative (see below).

Figurative speech. Are any of the words used in a way that is slightly different from the normal, plain meaning? Do they stand for something else? I tend to think not. The language is pretty straightforward and I don’t think any of the words are used in a way that is different from what is written. I suppose there is the possibility that the first line, “A voice says, ‘Cry!’” could be figurative in that it is describing a voice calling out, but perhaps not a physical sound that we would normally associate with hearing with our ears. Kind of like the sunrise I saw the other morning, which could have been described as the sky painted by God. In the same way, the voice described may not be an actual sound. Maybe.

Simile. Since simile is identified through the use of the words “like” or “as”, we can pretty easily spot the simile in the line “its beauty is like the flower of the field”. Following the line above, I suppose “its” could refer to either flesh or grass.

Metaphor. A more direct comparison than simile, this is indicated when a thing is described as being another thing. In this passage, I think there are a couple instances. First is the line “All flesh is grass”, the metaphor being that flesh is grass. The second occurs at the end when it is stated “the people are grass”. Here again, people are being compared to grass directly.

Parable. A parable is defined in our text as an extended simile and has a single main point. I think this passage probably does qualify as a parable. It is a very brief story about grass being beautiful, but it and flowers fade when the LORD blows on it. The point being that people (as grass) are the same – we will eventually wither and fade.

Allegory. An allegory is defined as an extended metaphor with different parts of the story representing different points. I think with the first and last lines of the story of grass being metaphorical statements, there is a strong temptation to see the whole passage as an allegory. But I’m not sure it really contains multiple meanings or multiple metaphors for different things. So I’m going to come down on the side of this not being an allegory.

Prophecy. As we discussed in class and in the text, Biblical prophecy is not foretelling the future. Rather, it plays one of two roles. Calling people (back) to a holy life and/or predicting blessing or judgment. I don’t see anything in this passage that plays to either of those roles, so I’m going with no for prophecy.

Poetry. We had a whole section in our text about poetry, including how Hebrew poetry differs from English poetry. Given some of the conventions used to indicate poetry in modern Bibles, I suppose it is possible the passage was written in a poetical(???) manner. Not real sure on this one.

Have I ever mentioned that literature and English classes in high school were my most difficult subjects.

Last night my wife and I went to see The Book of Eli.  There were a couple times when I felt it was kind of pandering to a Mad Max’ish audience.  It was also a lot to take in and I believe I may need to watch it again (and again and again?) to see what I missed.  Anyway, don’t want to go into too much about the movie at this point except to say that there are at least two twists at the end.  I had kind of figured one out, but they layered a twist on top of a twist (so maybe three twists).

It was interesting in light of some of the studying we’ve been doing the past couple weeks.  Especially in this week’s reading (Chapter 3 of The Portable Seminary) and last week’s about the languages of the Bible.  Looking back through this week’s chapter, I think this quote from Dallas Willard (bottom of page 73) makes an interesting point to The Book of Eli:

“God has been willing and competent to arrange for the Bible, including its record of Jesus, to emerge and be preserved in ways that will secure his purposes for it among human beings worldwide.”

I think anyone who sees the movie will understand how fitting that comment is.

This past week in our Christianity study, Pastor Mark challenged us to a quick writing assignment during the class.  The question he posed to us was “how are the Biblical languages ideal for God to reveal himself to us?”  We went around the table and most everyone discussed or shared a little bit about what they wrote.  So, to kind of memorialize what I managed to slap down on the paper, here is what I had.

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In order for God to reveal himself to us, he had to make sure the message would get to us.  This meant, among other things, that the Bible and all of the information in it had to survive over numerous centuries, peoples, technologies, and cultures.

To get things started, Hebrew was used and was ideal because it is a language that I call “pictoral based”.  That is, it is good for describing the world – things, basic actions, this happened, that happened.  To some extent, it is a good storytelling language that would have been especially useful in a time when written words were rare and people relied instead on a spoken tradition.  And if you’ve ever done the whisper exercise, you know that keeping things simple is important.

I also tend to think of that time period as an “infancy” period for God’s people.  In relative terms, those who believed in God were in a young period in history – like a little child.  Having had little children, I know that when teaching them to communicate, you have to start with basic words.  Mama. Papa. Ball. Apple. Dog. Run. Walk. Sit.  That is, words that describe the world and what the young child sees and experiences.  Much like the Hebrew language.  So this was ideal in preserving God’s revealed message for the first few thousand years.

With the arrival of Jesus, a new language became necessary.  Greek.  Of course there were practical considerations that made it an ideal language.  It was a language that most people in that part of the world could communicate with, which helped in spreading the Word.  But for my “construct”, a key component is that Greek was a language that could express higher level concepts and thoughts.  As our Portable Seminary text indicates, Greek was a very nuanced language that could convey lots of information (if I can get started on my Greek study, maybe I’ll figure that out).

This new language was important as God’s people (both Jew and Gentile) had reached a new age and to some extent had grown up.  With Jesus, it was now time for us to start to learn how to think about applying God’s laws and revelations in a way beyond mechanical adherence to an ordinance.  So being able to describe and communicate how we think and feel and what motivates us became important.  Again, this is similar to a child growing up.  As they get older, at least in school, they start getting into abstract concepts and ideas.

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OK, I think that is probably all I’ll get to tonight.  Seems like I had something to wrap this up with, but my brain has spaced out on me.  I’ll have some more entries later this week – a little something from our A Guide to Prayer that we use in Sunday School and I need to start a bit about my lifestyle change (yeah, that’s a fancy way to discuss losing weight!).  And no, I haven’t proofed this before hitting the Publish button.