Paradox Porch: July 2008

get in touch

idea

the collective will

Ants.
Ants building a society....remarkable.

bon voyage

Places I've visited, ...maybe I should get out more,
there's so much more to see.

visited 8 states (3.55%)

Create your own visited map of The World

Way

“It is precisely our consciousness of sin
that can lead us nearer to God.
For there is hope of conquering the evil, if only,
every time sin attacks us, it leads us nearer to God.”

Soren Kierkegaard

Steve Harvey introduces Jesus

Come, let's shout praises to God,
raise the roof for the Rock who saved us!
Let's march into his presence singing praises,
lifting the rafters with our hymns!

I stand to praise You
But I fall on my knees
My spirit is willing
But my flesh is so weak

Light the fire
In my soul
Fan the flame
Make me whole
Lord, You know
Just where I've been
So light the fire
in my heart again

I feel Your arms around me
As the power of
Your healing begins
Your spirit moves through me
Like a mighty rushing wind

Light the fire
In my soul
Fan the flame
Make me whole
Lord, You know
Just where I've been
So light the fire
in my heart again

In the beginning...

God looked over everything he had made;
it was so good, so very good!

Very Berry Query

Okay, seeing as it IS summer, how about a little summer fruit quiz. How well do you know your berries? Take your best shot (it doesn't count to do this quietly on your own, hit the COMMENT button below)

Number

1

Number 2

Number 3

Number 4

Number 5

Number 6 (here's a hint: Amelanchier alnifolia Nutt.)

Dear baby Jesus...

I have to be honest, when I hear some people pray- or more specifically, when I listen to what people say and how they say it when they are 'praying' I can't 'pray' with them. I don't know, I just get too distracted if someone changes their voice or starts to say strange things when they're talking to God. Apart from rank theological faux pas, (i.e. "thank you heavenly father that you died on the cross for my sins"....ACK!!! news flash: the Father didn't die on the cross, and it wasn't FOR sins, etc. etc.) probably the most debilitating pray-ers are those who continually repeat some form of address (i.e. "Dear Lord and heavenly father, we thank you Lord Jesus, for this food loving God, and for the sunshine dear God...etc. etc.).
What we say and how we say it when we are 'praying' REALLY indicates our perception of God. And frankly, some people have a very weird, co-dependent, deaf, identity crisis, weak, troubled "God."

Although it is hyperbole, this hilarious clip is not too far off the truth:

After the 'vocative' (the address of God) use the term "you."

The sound of heaven

Try to make it through all of these videos without at least chuckling a little. It’s even harder if it’s late at night.

hahahaha

Department Store

Just a few of the funny things a buddy and I saw in a big box store recently...

Love it ! ! ti evoL

If you instantly recognised this car, you are over 35

Bonus age points if you know what model of Ford this is.

Bonus TeenBeat points if you also said "David Soul was DREAMY".

Re-Judaizing Jesus

One of 10 Ideas That Are Changing The World

from the Time magazine article listed in my earlier post, here is one that will get you thinking a bit. Give me your thoughts and comments (click on 'comment')...even you lurkers!

Recently a popular blogger — let's call him Rabbi Ben — zinged the scholarship of a man we shall call Rabbi Rob. R. Ben claimed R. Rob did not "understand the difference between Judaism prior to the two Jewish wars in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D. and later Mishnaic and Talmudic Judaism." He helpfully provided a syllabus.

Actually, neither man is a rabbi. (Sorry.) Ben Witherington is a Methodist New Testament scholar, and Rob Bell a rising Michigan megapastor. Yet each regards sources like the Mishnah and Rabbi Akiva as vital to understanding history's best-known Jew: Jesus.

This is seismic. For centuries, the discipline of Christian "Hebraics" consisted primarily of Christians cherry-picking Jewish texts to support the traditionally assumed contradiction between the Jews — whose alleged dry legalism contributed to their fumbling their ancient tribal covenant with God — and Jesus, who personally embodied God's new covenant of love. But today seminaries across the Christian spectrum teach, as Vanderbilt University New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine says, that "if you get the [Jewish] context wrong, you will certainly get Jesus wrong."

The shift came in stages: first a brute acceptance that Jesus was born a Jew and did Jewish things; then admission that he and his interpreter Paul saw themselves as Jews even while founding what became another faith; and today, recognition of what the Rev. Bruce Chilton, author of Rabbi Jesus, calls Jesus' passionate dedication "to Jewish ideas of his day" on everything from ritual purity to the ideal of the kingdom of God — ideas he rewove but did not abandon.

What does this mean, practically? At times the resulting adjustment seems simple. For example, Bell thinks he knows the mysterious words Jesus wrote in the dust while defending the adulteress ("He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone," etc.). By Bell's calculation, that showdown occurred at the same time as religious Jews' yearly reading of the prophet Jeremiah's warning that "those who turn from [God] will be written in the dust because they have forsaken [him]." Thus Jesus wrote the crowd's names to warn that their lack of compassion alienated their (and his) God.

A trickier revision for readers involves Paul's Letter to the Romans, forever a key Christian text on sin and Christ's salvific grace. Yet this reading necessitates skipping over what seems like extraneous material in Chapters 9 through 11, which are about the Jews. Increasingly, says Jason Byassee, an editor at the Christian Century,, scholars now read Romans through those chapters, as a musing by a lifelong Jew on how God can fulfill his biblical covenant with Israel even if it does not accept His son. Byassee the theologian agrees. But as a Methodist pastor, he frets that Romans "is no longer really about Gentile Christians. How do you preach it?"

That's not a frivolous query. Ideally, the reassessment should increase both Jewish-Christian amity and gospel clarity, things that won't happen if regular Christians feel that in rediscovering Jesus the Jew, they have lost Christ. Yet Bell finds this particular genie so logically powerful that he has no wish to rebottle it. Once in, he says, "you're in deep. You're hooked. 'Cause you can't ever read it the same way again."