Interest in worship

My previous post on worship was written in response to watching an episode of The Simpsons. That post was mainly geared toward answering a popular piece of anti-Christian propaganda that had been promoted on the show. But worship does deserve treatment in its own right, not just in responding to caricatures from the critics. So I'm planning two follow-ups at this point:

• How holy living fits into the picture of worship
  
• Worship and religion called for in the Bible

It just leaves such an incomplete picture, to talk about a skeptical argument and leave it there.

A mother's prayer for teenagers: Use of talents

Lord, thank you for (name). Thank you for the talents and gifts you have given him. May he recognize them and build them. May he know the satisfaction of dedication, of mastering a skill, and the satisfaction of excellence. As you saw in the beginning that what you had made was good, may he also know the delight of recognizing that what he has accomplished is good. May his work serve you and bless others. May he remember humility, and give you the glory. May he love and follow you all his days.

Does God want our worship?

In the often anti-Christian show The Simpsons, there is an episode in which Homer Simpson is tricked into becoming a missionary (Episode "Missionary: Impossible" from Season 11.) The illiterate primitive people at the mission know more about religion than Homer does, in some ways. The show's writers have someone ask Homer a question that many Christians have heard from skeptics, and instead of having Homer give a Christian reply, they have Homer give the standard mockers' reply, with a little Hollywood flair added:

Native: "If the Lord is all-powerful, why does he care whether we worship him or not?"

Homer: "It's because God is powerful, but also insecure. Like Barbra Streisand before James Brolin."

If you were to search the commands in the books of Moses, you would not find a command where God asks for flattery. In the commands of the books of Moses, God shows remarkably little interest in receiving praise. In the Ten Commandments, the well-known command forbidding idol-worship is not, after all, followed by a command insisting on praising God. The Sabbath command does not contain a command to conduct worship services; it contains a command to rest from work. The kind of "worship" which God asks of his people as they live their daily lives is to be ethical: to be morally good. He requires of his people that they live good lives: not lying, not stealing, not murdering, not taking each others' wives and husbands. He asks his people to be holy as God himself is holy. He asks us to follow him in his ways.

The Simpsons doesn't exist to be fair; they exist to entertain. But if they had given a decent answer, it might have gone something like this:

Native: "If the Lord is all-powerful, why does he care whether we worship him or not?"

Could have said: "He cares whether we live good lives. It wouldn't be such a bad idea if we cared about our lives as much as He does."

And even that is before we begin to understand what a blessing it is to know God, and to be his people.

Is "inerrancy" a high view of Scripture?

The problem with "inerrancy" is that it leaves you nowhere to go. If the Old Testament is inerrant and if inerrancy is enough, then why do we need the New Testament? Either the New Testament is superfluous -- or inerrancy is not enough. And if inerrancy is not enough for the Old Testament to be sufficient, why should inerrancy be enough for the New Testament? Either way, if "inerrancy" is the goal, there's a problem for the New Testament. When we talk about "inerrancy", we define the good in terms of avoiding error -- and once error has been avoided, what else do you need?

There is a hazard in debating secondary issues: we can mistake them for primary ones. If the Bible did not reveal God to us, it would not be enough, even if the whole world agreed it was error-free. If the Bible does reveal God to us, then it is nothing but shenanigans to avoid hearing it on the pretext that there may be mistakes in the lengths of the reigns in the kings' lists or a pro-Israeli bias in the point of view of some ancient battles.

The question of inerrancy loses sight of knowing God. The glory of the Bible is not "inerrancy" -- it is the face of God, looking on us with favor and giving us peace. In pursuing inerrancy, there is one thing we lack: following Jesus.

Apocryphal gospels as "fan fiction"

I enjoy fan fiction -- you know, those fan-written stories for things that ended too soon. I've read fan fiction for book series like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, and for the occasional TV show too.

What is the appeal of fan fiction? In a word: More. You get to the end of something good, and you want more. Seven Harry Potter books seems like a lot -- unless you really came to enjoy the characters. And then you didn't want it to end.

Most Fan fiction has fairly predictable subject matter. Here are some common things that happen in fan fiction:

• Events may be told from a different character's point of view.
• A different person may be the central character, or a minor character may become a major character.
• They may narrate events that were not described in the original work. Sometimes there are entirely new scenes, but more often they provide "deleted scene" information or untold back story to the original work.
• They may try a slightly different personality for a character, and see what kind of impact that would have on events. What if Bella Swan (Twilight) hadn't been so insecure and needy? What if Edward hadn't been such a gentleman? What if Dumbledore (Harry Potter) had actually been evil?
• Often they explore different relationships. For example, what if Hermione Granger had become interested in someone besides Ron Weasley? Or what if a character without a romantic history, such as Neville Longbottom, had been given that chance?

There are other types of material for fan fiction, but these are among the most common.

What does it have to do with the apocryphal gospels?

As best I can tell, the right literary category for many of the apocryphal gospels is "fan fiction". Fan fiction has some rules: the main characters are taken from another work or group of works. You can tell the characters are borrowed because they're not really introduced; they're assumed to be known to the reader already.

Many of us have, at some point in our lives, experienced a sense of disappointment that we cannot read a whole world filled with books about what people remembered of Jesus, as the fourth gospel suggests could have been done. What we want, in a word, is more. As far as the usual types of fan fiction, we see them represented among the apocryphal gospels:

• Events are told from another point-of-view, such as one of the Mary's.
• "Missing scenes" gospels create tales of Jesus' childhood, or of Mary and Joseph's back story.
• Minor characters come to the foreground in the Gospel of Judas or of Mary.
• Alternative relationships develop, such as between Jesus and Mary.

Not all of the apocryphal gospels are fan fiction; some are sayings collections, or meditations on theology. But for some of them, it looks like they were written from a simple desire to have more material on Jesus.

Technology: Innovation Wishlist 2011

It has been awhile since I've posted a wishlist for new inventions. So here's a short list of technological advances that I would welcome. I've been sick lately (just a cold), so a lot of these are health-related:

• A little ear-scope with a micro-camera where you could put the scope in your ear and get an image on-screen on your computer, see what you're dealing with there.
• A little microscope with a computer hook-up where you could put in a drop of blood, have it analyze all the images that it finds at the cellular level, match it with images of known germs in a database, and tell you what exactly you've got -- a real diagnosis instead of a best-guess from the symptoms.
• Ok, I really want a home-computer compatible little medical diagnostic lab. Then you could get decent recommendations for treatment from a home computer for non-serious things. Who wants to be around a lot of other sick people in a medical office when your computer can make house calls?
• Moving away from the medical end, how about a forensic application: give the computer a DNA sample from a suspect or unidentified person, have it create an image of the person's face. Maybe it could also give probable ranges for height and weight.

Dreaming ...

On the 10th anniversary of 9/11

Lord, have mercy.

2996 crosses

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A mother's prayer for teenagers: worship

Lord, thank you for (name). May he know joy in worship; may he desire to praise you and know the gladness of rejoicing in your goodness. May he know the satisfaction of finding wisdom and insight in your word. May he desire always to find or build a fellowship of believers throughout his life, wherever he may go. May he seek your word and seek your people, and be at home there. May he love and follow you all his days.

Torah: Ahead of its time?

The Torah has had its critics since ancient times. But there are still some provisions in the Torah that were ahead of its time. Sometimes it was only ahead of some other cultures of its day; in other places the Torah has laws that are arguably more practical and just than even those we have today. In the past I've mentioned laws on stealing and laws on economic sustainability. Here are some other areas where the Torah seems ahead of its time:

• Environmental laws: The Torah provided for sustainable farming by establishing regular Sabbath years where farmland could lie fallow and regain its fertility. (Leviticus 25:2-5)
  
• Welfare/workfare laws: striking a balance between responsibility and compassion, the poor and destitute were given the opportunity to work and provide for themselves by gleaning from another field, so that they could sustain themselves even without "employment" or land, and without losing the obligation to be responsible for themselves. (Leviticus 19:9-10, 23:22; Deuteronomy 24:21)
  
• Infection control: The Torah established ways to recognize and prevent the spread of infectious diseases. It had procedures for inspecting and evaluating infections, for quarantine of suspected infection, and washing / cleansing. It called for the destruction of contaminated cloth. (Leviticus 13; the other hygiene and washing provisions in the Torah could also be included here)
  
• A day of rest: On the bumper stickers, labor unions like to claim credit for weekends. But the Torah had regular weekly rest built into the laws thousands of years earlier. A day of rest is a humane and sensible provision, one that many people still see fit to observe today. It is one of the few provisions of the Biblical law that even many atheists willingly adopt. (Exodus 20:8)
  
• Humane treatment of animals: The law makes provision for an animal to enjoy plenty of food, and to share a day of rest just like the people. (Deuteronomy 25:4; Exodus 20:10)

St Augustine, the Torah, and the critics of Christ

Our age likes to congratulate itself on our supposed superiority to other times. We like to imagine that we alone have raised questions -- such bold and daring questions that no one in ages past dared to ask. We might be more open-minded if we read some older books.

Christians have a long history of mixed reactions to the Old Testament in general, and to the Torah in particular. Here we see St Augustine, before his conversion, puzzling over questions leveled by critics of Christianity. The question is roughly about whether it was healthy to regard the Old Testament patriarchs as role models:

Are they to be esteemed righteous who had many wives at once, and did kill men, and sacrifice living creatures? (Confessions III:VII)

His objections were, perhaps, never answered in any historical or literal sense. As Augustine listened to one of the renowned Christian scholars of his day, St Ambrose, he found himself listening particularly to answers for questions like these. He gradually came to accept the practice of dealing with such passages figuratively ("in a figure"):

For first, these things also had now begun to appear to me capable of defence; and the Catholic faith, for which I had thought nothing could be said against the Manichees' objections, I now thought might be maintained without shamelessness; especially after I had heard one or two places of the Old Testament resolved, and ofttimes "in a figure," which when I understood literally, I was slain spiritually. Very many places then of those books having been explained, I now blamed my despair, in believing that no answer could be given to such as hated and scoffed at the Law and the Prophets. (Confessions V:XIV)

When Augustine says of the Old Testament that when he understood it literally he was slain spiritually, it comes down to this: the plain sense of the Old Testament was a deal-breaker for him.

And so Augustine found, as many Christians have found, that the most adamant critics of Christianity spend much of their time arguing about the Torah or the earliest history of Israel. For my own part, I suspect this is because they cannot justly say much against Christ, and so try to turn people away from him by other means.

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I hope it does not leave the wrong impression to leave it here; the next post is closely related. I'm trying to keep the posts to reasonable lengths.