Sabbathing Well

I am by no means an expert on sabbath, either the theological concept or the implementation of this concept, but I wanted to share some thoughts on sabbath that I find helpful. This essay is intended as much as a future resource for me as anyone else.

There is a lot I could same about sabbath that I will save for another post. God in His infinite wisdom has been very good to us by telling us to take a day off and trust Him, not our perception of our control, to keep the world spinning. The Bible is full of God’s evidence why we need sabbath and why it was made for us (Mark 2.27).

I first started observing a sabbath in university. Ever Friday after class, I was free to do whatever I wanted. In the weeks around midterm season, when this time was most threatened or neglected, I found that I quickly grew discouraged. There were weeks where every hour for at least seven days was assigned a task; there was no room for margin or error, and this would become overwhelming. By having one afternoon, just part of a day to relax, I was able to diffuse the pressure and the monotony surrounding me. No matter how busy I was, I had my Friday afternoons to have fun. This same scenario continued after university when I began working with Chi Alpha Campus Ministries. God knew we needed sabbath and we never outgrow this need.

I am currently working with Chi Alpha while going to grad school part time. Balancing these two potentially fulltime endeavors has put my sabbath observance to the test. I remember the first few weekends once grad school started being tempted not to take a sabbath. There was ministry work and classwork piling up, how could I take a day off? I tried this one weekend and clearly remember God, during my prayer time, telling me this was an unwise choice. Yes, I was busier than I had been, but He knew that I still needed rest. If I was going to survive, I still needed sabbath. Since then, I have done my best to honor God’s command. There are some weeks this is not possible such as our weekend fall retreat in October or SALT conference in January, but these are the exception not the norm and the Lord knows the intention of my heart.

An important principle I have found with my experiences of sabbath is recreation. The goal of sabbath is to rest; to rest and trust God. A lot of time we think sabbath should be free and unrestricted time. I find that unrestricted time often turns into unintentional time which becomes wasted time. Instead, I am very intentional about how I spend my sabbath. I want my sabbath to be purposeful. To do this, I differentiate between entertainment and recreation. Entertainment is fun. It is good in moderation, but counterproductive when overindulged in like candy. Our society is great at pointing us toward (and selling us) entertainment. There is less focus on recreation.

By recreation, I do not only mean going to a park or participating in an organized sport, although these activities could qualify. My focus is on the idea of re-creation; finding what activities help me or others to rebuild our hearts, minds, and souls that are tired after the week’s work. An easy question to ask is what is lifegiving? What are activities that make me feel refreshed after spending an hour or two? I love watching movies, but after a couple of hours I begin to feel antsy. But I can write or read for a few hours and feel more energetic and accomplished afterward. As I said, moderation is important. Some people can participate in one recreational activity for hours and feel rested; I often need to do a few things for a few hours to feel the most rested. I also believe that creativity is an important part of sabbathing. God has made us to be creative and activities where we get to express this God-given creativity are often recreational. It can be as simple taking a fun photo to post on Instagram, it does not have to be some grand artistic feat. I have an Instagram account where I create scenes and take pictures of Lego people and I usually only get to do this on my sabbath.

To brainstorm recreational activities, I keep a list of things that I wish I had time to do during the busy work week. If I had more time, what would I want to spend my time doing? I then filter this list through the question will I feel accomplished afterward? If the answer is ‘yes,’ then this activity is a good candidate for sabbatical recreation.

I keep a list of activities on my phone to help me be purposeful with my sabbaths. I also add to this list, for a given week, if there is something specific that I wish I had time for. The items on my current list are:

·       Pray

·       Walk Hobbit (our dog)

·       Write (fiction)

·       Read [current theological or faith-building book]

·       Read fiction

·       Get donuts

·       Lego instagram

·       Yard work

·       Water the air plants

·       Bake something

·       Make sugar cubes

This is my current list. During a given sabbath time, I will pull up this list and check through some of the activities. I do not usually get to all these items in one sabbath. That is fine; this list is to help me remember what is recreational for me and not some goal I must strive for. But as I spend time on some of these activities, I do feel accomplished and purposeful. At the end of my sabbath, I can reflect on my time and feel satisfied with the fun things I had time to do because of my sabbath.

Marriage, Birth, and Trinity

            Today is Emily and my ninth wedding anniversary. We are also expecting our daughter, our first child, to be born any day now. As I reflect on these last nine years and the exciting new season we are about to enter, I am once again amazed at how beautifully God has made marriage and family to be a picture of Himself and His good purpose for creation.

            From the love, commitment, and deep intimate relationship between Emily and me, new life has come. Our love for each other overflows and produces new life. Our daughter’s existence is an outworking of the relationship Emily and I have with each other.

            While paling in comparison to the full infinite grandeur of God, the example of our marriage bringing forth new life reflects who God is and His creation. As the triune God, He is by nature in deep intimate community. Before time, gravity, electrons, or the color green, God has been in perfect relationship with Himself. There has always been deep intimate love between the members of the trinity, and it is from this profound love that all of creation is derived. God does not need us, we are not essential to God’s existence, but instead we are the fruit of the overflow of the love between the trinity. God’s love and communion with Himself overflows and brings forth creation and new life. All of time and space exists because of God’s love in the same way that our daughter’s existence is rooted in the love between Emily and me. God has never needed creation, but in God’s love and goodness He wanted creation. The trinity’s love is so deep that God wants to share His love with us.

            How beautiful it is to think that God in His wisdom has created marriage and birth so that they can reflect this loving nature about Himself.

Thoughts on Heaven: Stories in Heaven

People love stories. While styles and story structures change between different cultures and eras, the act of creating fiction transcends these times and places. Telling stories, like music or language, is one of the things which makes us human; it’s a part of who we are.

As the final question in my Thoughts on Heaven posts (part 1. and part 2), what will stories be like in Heaven? In Heaven we will be made perfect, we will at last be fully sanctified, but how will this affect the ways we tell stories? What will story structure be like then? Will we still see characters venture down the hero’s journey? Stories now are based on overcoming a conflict: an evil king, personal failure, a character flaw, but how will this be different in the unchanging state of Heaven? If we are no longer being transformed in nature (we will continue to learn, develop, and discover), will we find another way to create plot and story? Will conflict as the foundation for stories be replaced by something else? We have no way of knowing what stories will be like, but telling stories is such a part of who we are that surely it will continue on into eternity.

Another question I have is: will our stories from this age still be enjoyable? How will we, once in our final glorified state, relate back to our current tales about personal growth and overcoming an obstacle? Will our stories about imperfect characters, fighting evil or discovering who they are, be irrelevant to perfected us in Heaven? Or will our current stories be like children’s books which we have outgrown but still have fond memories of? And how will we relate to our memories of this life?

Will our perfection prevent us from relating to our imperfect selves now? Will our current struggles be alien to us in Heaven? I cannot imagine so, and that gives me hope both for my memories of this life and the stories we now tell. I am no longer nine years old, but I still appreciate my memories from when I was nine, and even when made completely whole these fallen earthly memories will forever be a part of the story of who I am.

Just like our memories, perhaps our modern stories will no longer inspire us toward who we can be (maybe they will somehow?), but they will still remind us of who we were and where we have come from. There is still great power in this.

Thoughts on Heaven: Is Ministry a Temp Job?

This post is a continuation of the ideas laid out in my previous post "Thoughts on Heaven" and is a question I have been praying and wrestling about for a while: is ministry a temp job?

An aspect of Heaven which Scripture describes is that we will have jobs and roles in eternity (Gen 1.28, 1 Cor 6.2-3, Mt 19.28, Rev 3.21, 22.5). Immediately we think this sounds terrible; retirement is a dream of our modern era. This stems not from an eternal perspective on the nature of work, but is a consequence of living in a fallen world. Originally we were given the job of cultivating God’s good creation (Gen 1:26-30), and having work was a part of God’s design for humans. In Genesis 3:17-19 we see part of the curse is our work becomes difficult. Much of the enjoyment intended for our occupations has been replaced with weariness and struggle. But we still have a God-given desire to do, make, create, and work.

In light of eternity, what job security do I have as someone in full-time ministry? For those in vocational ministry, whether as a pastor of a local church, a campus minister, a cross-cultural missionary, or any number of other full-time positions, will we outgrow our need for ministry? Other jobs like engineers, baristas, and interior designers conceivably have a place in Heaven. Should pastors be concerned that one day we are doing to be replaced by the Good Shepherd (Jn 10:11-18) himself? When Jesus came he made the high priest’s job redundant (Heb 4:14). Does the same fate await ministers in Heaven? What use will we have for sermons or Bible studies when standing in God’s presence? Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13:8-10 that prophecies and speaking in tongues will cease in Heaven, and such means of experiencing God will be eclipsed by God Himself. What happens if a pastor’s only marketable skill or job experience is preaching? Does an infinity of unemployment await him or her?

Perhaps we will all have time to devote toward developing other jobs, tasks, and creative endeavors. My father-in-law (who is also in full-time ministry) says he is waiting until Heaven to learn to play the violin, so perhaps he will have a future in one of Heaven’s orchestras?

The good news is, despite the fact that we do not know what Heaven holds for the full-time minister, our God is far too creative to abandon us to idleness for eternity.

What are your thoughts? Have you found any scripture which sheds more light on this subject?

Thoughts on Heaven: It will be more awesome than we can imagine

This blog post is a preface to a preface to some thoughts I have been praying and wrestling with God about. What will life in the New Heaven and Earth be like? As a child I remember being a little scared with the concept of Heaven because, to be honest, the idea of us floating around clouds with harps for an endless eternity sounded...boring. But God is not boring, and the more I learn about Him the more I am convinced of this. I remember finding comfort in the thought (perhaps this was God speaking) there will be baseball in Heaven (which is funny because I now think baseball is boring).

Our cultural image of Heaven, this place somewhere in the sky, all of us with halos and harps, is a gross underestimation of how awesome the New Heaven and New Earth will be. Heaven will be so much better than this feeble image. As best we can describe it, Heaven is the place where God (who is omnipresent) is; it  is the where He dwells. By place, I do mean Heaven will have the same three spatial dimensions we know here; Jesus in his resurrection body (a foreshadow of our own bodies to come 1 Cor 15:20) inhabited these spatial dimensions. This of course does not mean Heaven is restricted to those three dimensions.

An issue we finite creatures encounter when discussing Heaven is our ideas and descriptions are limited by our words; how can we define the infinite glory of Heaven with finite human words? This is why so much of theology is metaphorical. Now before you dismiss me as a heretic, hear me out. 

The metaphorical nature of theological concepts does not make them not true, what I mean is that such concepts as the truth of who God is, the Son's relationship to the Father, etc. are more true than what our limited words can express or our finite minds can comprehend. The Son and the Father are not only in a deep familial relationship with each other like a father and son, but they are one, and the metaphor of father and son is actually an understatement of their deep relationship, love, and unity. Jesus used the words "father" and "son" not because it perfectly describes Him and the Father, but because we can wrap our finite minds around these ideas; I understand what it is to have a father and to be a son. God and His awesome nature is too big for us to fully understand, this is just an aspect of our creature nature; God is God and we are not. 

This is why I think a reoccurring image used to depict Heaven is music (Rev 4:8-11). Have you ever listened to a piece of music which stirred up emotions or captivated you with its beauty and for a time, perhaps only a moment, you were transfixed by the experience? This, I think, is a better descriptions of what Heaven will be like than human words can say, which is why Scripture often uses music when describing Heaven. These passages do not mean Heaven will be one endless church service. Heaven will be more awesome than we can say or imagine because God is more awesome than we can understand.

A theology of viruses

You may have learned by now that I have a morbid fascination with diseases (why else does one study microbiology?). With my studies came some interesting theological observations, particularly about viruses. As I have discussed in previous posts, viruses are composed of a nucleic acid, either RNA or DNA, wrapped in a protein shell. A virus may or may not have a lipid membrane around the protein coat. Also important to note is that viruses are not classified as living organisms. Viruses by themselves have no metabolism, cannot replicate on their own, and lack other basic qualifications for being considered “alive”.

Because viruses cannot self-replicate, but hijack the cellular machinery of a host cell in order to reproduce, it is believed the origin of viruses is after that of cells. Viruses can only reproduce by attacking and killing other organisms; there is no such thing as a self-sufficient virus. To me this corresponds well with the Genesis creation accounts.

In the beginning God creates everything: light, space-time, molecules, plants, animals, and people, and after each step He stops to admire His work and declares that it is “good” (Gen 1.4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). The Hebrew word used is “towb” and translates as “good, pleasant, excellent, and valuable.” All throughout God’s creating process, He affirms the goodness of His creation. He even concludes the sixth day, after creating humanity, by declaring His work to be “very good” (Gen 1:31).

But where in God’s good creation does a parasitic “almost-living” thing like a virus belong? I think we have to turn to Genesis chapter 3 for the explanation. Here we have the Fall of Humanity and all of creation with it. God’s very good creation became marred by human sin and there were grave consequences; death entered creation and with it came viruses. It should be noted that Satan is not creative himself, but instead subverts preexisting things. We see with the temptation of Adam and Eve that the serpent twisted God’s words: "did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" (Gen 3:1b). Similarly, viruses are fraudulent creatures which mimic life, but exist by means of death, the result of sin. Viruses are a corruption of life, and there is no place for viruses in God’s good creation. They are an unfortunate result of sin and a reality we must face until all of creation is made new, but we know that when creation is transformed there will no longer be viruses to kill and destroy. We have not yet eradicated all viruses, but the day of their destruction is coming and there will be justice for all that has been stolen from humanity and creation by viruses.

Creativity and Agency

I have observed a trend for Christians to have an odd view of creativity, especially whenever it relates to creating something “good.” The phrase “God gave me a [insert creative endeavor here]” is thrown around lot. The heart behind this is good and genuine; God is the Author and Creator, the only Independent One. At the end of the day I am creature, and I am creative solely because I have been made to be creative. We have been created to create; it’s a part of being made in His (the Creator’s) image.  It is good for us to guard against pride and make sure to give God credit, but we can take this logic too far and inadvertently deny God some of the glory He is due.

If God gave me the “cool idea” I had, the poem I wrote, this blog post, did He give me the burrito I made for lunch? Technically the answer is ‘yes.’ Without getting into the details like: money, time, mind, food, we have the fundamental truth that I exist, the world exists, I have hands for folding burritos, and the very concept of burritos all because of God. No God, no burritos. It’s a perk of being Independent; everything else depends upon you.

The reason phrases like “God gave me a …” make me nervous is that it seems to deny any involvement on our part. “I did not write this worship song, God gave it to me” begins to sound

less like cooperative creativity and more like possession; I did not have anything to do with it, God just gave it to me. In truth God does not want worship songs, sermons, paintings, etc. apart from the people who have created them. If God wanted a song to exist He does not need anyone else; He imagined light, He can make a song manifest all by Himself. Rather than using us as some sort of printing press for His awesome ideas, God wants to create with us and through us. God did not need David to have psalms written; God delighted in His relationship with David. Please do not misunderstand this as some denial of the Divine authorship of Scripture, it’s not. God does not love and have a personal relationship with Psalm 119, but He does with David.

The term “agency” used in stories to describe characters who have the ability to effect the plot, and important characters usually have significantly more agency than random extra #8. God, being independent, is the source of all agency. He is also a good storyteller which means He has created us to be more than mere puppets He can manipulate as He sees fit. Relationship with God is not fatalistic or mechanistic; instead God in His goodness has granted me some agency on the world around me. I can create things. For His glory.

Furthermore any demeaning of human creativity denies God some of His glory. Our ability to be creative, to have agency, is one of God’s most glorious creations. We as humans have made a lot of things, we have created machines which would appear to be very fatalistic if one considers the point of view of a toaster; but we have not made something which can itself create. But God has. He alone has, which makes Him pretty awesome and worthy of a lot of glory.

So let us glorify our awesome and Independent Creator by reflecting His creativity with our own.

The Bible is not like Wikipedia

I love Wikipedia. It is among my most frequently visited websites. When I'm bored, have a random question, or want to refresh my knowledge on topics I learn in college, I turn to Wikipedia. It's a beautiful thing.

But the Bible is not like Wikipedia, no matter how often we try to make it so. Here are a few reasons why not:

1. It does not answer our every question. The Bible is a narrative. It has an author and an author's message/story to us telling us what He intends. Selfishly we want the Bible to provide us with an omniscient objective point of view over all of history, which we can evaluate and judge based upon our own understanding. Sorry we don't get to be omniscient, that's just part of finitude. Some questions are left unanswered.

2.  We don't get to edit it to say what we want/think it should say. It edits us.

3.  We have to study it and discover what God was saying and is saying, which means we need to do our homework and be careful. When reading the Bible is all too easy to interpret a passage through my own cultural understanding. The problem is importing my culture, my ideas, my paradigm is inadvertently editorial.

To properly understand scripture we have to understand culture; both our own and that of the original audience. People have always existed within a culture and cultural context. The difficulty for us arises when our own culture is separated from the original author and audience’s culture by, say language and a couple thousand years. To assume that I can read a text written to another audience in another culture at another time, without considering or trying to understand the original author's culture and the original audience's culture is arrogant. There is no book in the Bible written to Tim with his Western 21st Century Post-Enlightenment paradigm, so I guess I will have some studying to do.

But the good news is, the more I learn about the Bible, the context, and the cultures, the richer my understanding of the Bible becomes. I love Jesus, but the more I understand what His words and actions meant in First Century Palestine under Roman oppression, the more I am challenged and inspired. Future posts on some examples to come.

Music theorist vs. Musician

In college I had two majors: music composition and microbiology.  Of these two degrees music was the more challenging of the two, because rather than simply studying and regurgitating information it required my synthesis of new musical scores and performances.

I thoroughly enjoyed my study of music, but I found my biggest handicap was my lack of musicianship.  To be honest I hate practicing (still do).  Most of my friends in the music department would ideally spend 4-6 hours at the piano or with their violins.  I get bored after 15 minutes, about when I am actually warmed up.  As I learned more as a composer, I realized music theory is no substitute for playing an instrument.  The theory is fascinating, but music is ultimately about performance. It is only when played by a musician, in real time, the countless notes I have written come alive.

Furthermore the validity of academic study of music theory is ultimately derived from the performance of music, both those creating music (musician) and those receiving music (audience/other musicians).  Music theory is proved when the average person can pick up an instrument and over time discover everything taught in the classroom.  Music is art, meaning it should express thoughts, ideas, and emotions which are understood by people, and music is subjective.  With these two qualities come certain risks for educational institutions focused on this subject.  If academia makes statements and preferences about music and music theory which the common person cannot understand or agree with, then the institution has lost its ability to properly engage with people and culture.

Jesus is a musician.  What I mean is Jesus did not come to teach us a new philosophy or to theorize about God’s Kingdom.  Instead Jesus came to Earth, embodied God's Kingdom, and lived a sinless life for us.  Now He welcomes us to join His orchestra and participate.

We have to be careful not to become only Jesus theorists.  It can be easy to convince ourselves because we know the proper theology, ecclesiology, or missiology this somehow qualifies as faith.  The problem is Jesus is not some theory and God's Kingdom is not mere ideas or ideals.  Following His example I have to actually live out my faith.  I enjoy studying theology and see great fruit from it, but only as I am able to apply it in my life.  Faith is not knowledge; a living faith requires action and an embodiment of God's Kingdom.  As scripture describes it, "faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead" (James 2:17).

As individuals we need to be careful not to settle for theory alone, and we as the Church need to guard against this as well.  Just as academia can lose its purpose by isolating itself from people, the Church too can become the haunt of theorists and those already members of the Church.  It is not enough to love the poor in theory.  Instead we need to focus upon engaging with people; reaching out, expressing our faith, and loving the others whom Jesus deeply loves.  We have been called to join God’s ministry of reconciliation, and our mission is to do just this.

If my writing, if our reading, praying, and listening to sermons only increases our Jesus theory and not our embodiment of God's Kingdom, we are wasting our time.

So let us go practice living like Jesus in His Kingdom here on Earth.  I don't know about you, but I feel I am just getting warmed up

Scripture Reading like Amino Acids

I love the Bible.  It's an interesting/difficult/confusing/challenging library of books.  There are numerous reasons and explanations of why we should read the Bible and the benefits of daily Bible reading.  Many explanations are well meant, but can be theologically unsound.  For example reading the Bible does not earn you Jesus points.  It just doesn't.  Our desire for control (qualifies as sin when over-prioritized) would love a formula such as the following:

[(X hours reading Bible + Y hours praying + W% tithe given)/168 hours per week] = Jesus Points.

Thankfully faith does not work like this.  Faith is relationship with God and therefore not something which can be quantitatively assessed.

Instead I think reading the Bible functions a lot more like amino acids.  Any introductory Biology course (or Wikipedia) informs us amino acids are the molecular building blocks our bodies and other organisms use to make proteins.  Proteins in turn make up basically everything in our bodies.  There are approximately 25,000 genes in our individual genomes which code for approximately 100,000 proteins that make up us.  We are composed of a lot of proteins built out of tons of amino acids.  But how is reading the Bible like amino acids?

I don't know how God speaks to you during your Bible reading, and it's fun to see how God speaks to people differently, but personally when God speaks through His word it is almost always not while I am reading the Bible.  Instead He usually brings up passages, stories, ideas, etc. from the Bible at other times (during worship, prayer, driving, eating, etc.).  For me reading the Bible is not a time to sit down and chat with God, it is a time to ingest raw materials and have those within me for future conversations.  I read the Bible to acquire building blocks God will later use to speak; each chapter, parable, psalm is like an amino acid which God will have available to bring to mind.

Some memorable examples God has said:
"Remember how I said I AM faithful? I have not changed."(2 Tim 2:13, Heb 10:23) or "An arrogant pharisee and a humble tax collector walk into the Temple (Lk 18:9-14)....which one of them is your religious spirit acting like right now?"

I am glad reading God's word is not a prerequisite for God to speak, but it does help facilitate our hearing Him.  I don't know about you, but I need a lot of help to quiet myself and listen for God's voice.  The Bible also provides a standard or baseline by which I can measure and calibrate my life.  More on calibration in future posts; for now let's go be people of the Word and acquire some more amino acid-like building blocks.

Another lesson from our dear friend Escherichia coli

A while ago I posted about what our dear friend Escherichia coli (E. coli) can teach us about raising up new leaders (click here), and today Escherichia will once again be teaching us another important theological principle; this time on sanctification.

But first an introduction to E. coli and a process known as Bacterial transformation.  Despite the bad reputation E. coli gets in the media, this little gram negative bacteria is essential to the proper health of our intestinal flora.  E. coli plays a key role removing in the toxic O² gas which otherwise would kill many of the obligate anaerobic (cannot tolerate O²) bacteria within us, and we need our intestinal bacteria!  So having E. coli is important.

Bacterial transformation is a process by which bacteria cells are able to find and absorb new DNA fragments from their environment.  This allows for a transformed bacteria to begin expressing novel DNA sequences and novel proteins.  Some bacteria are naturally able to incorporate environmental DNA, this characteristic is known as "competency", while other bacteria like E. coli require a bit of coaxing¹ into DNA uptake.  Transformation for E. coli is contingent upon prior external events, and only then is E. coli able to incorporate and begin expressing new DNA.

Cool, so what does this have to do with us?  I submit to you that we are like E. coli.  Despite all that we are capable of or our best intentions, left to our own devices Humanity will never save itself.  At the Fall we lost our identities, our humanity was warped, and ever since we have been shadows of who we were intended to be.  We are broken and hurting and we cannot change ourselves.  But in Jesus everything changes, He's a game-changer.  Through His work and His grace we are now able to be transformed; His victory is the external event upon which our ability to be transformed depends.  Like transformed E. coli expressing novel DNA, in Jesus we are changed and now able to express an identity which was previously foreign to us.  We are made human, as God intended in the beginning, once again.

I encourage you to allow Jesus to transform you as He alone can, back into who He alone intended you to be.  May we all live as transformed E. coli expressing our renewed identities.

---

1. Ingraham, John L. et al.  Microbe.  ASM Press. 2006. p.187.

Dangers of Music Theory and Theology

Studying Music Theory and Theology both share an inherent danger.  As a lover of both disciplines it is important I guard myself from this common risk.  Music Theory and Theology each serve their appropriate roles as means to an end, but have the capacity of becoming ends in and of themselves.

When I became a student of Music Theory I did so to expand my understanding of music.  I love how music ebbs and flows and engages with the world.  Tension and release.  Music is awe-inspiring, and learning some of the theory which undergirds it has only increased my adoration of music.  But studying Music Theory was never meant to overshadow my engagement with music.  I studied key signatures, chord structures, and harmonic progressions not to gain mastery over music, but to learn how to better appreciate it.  I want to go deeper in my love of music.

But a frustration I encountered as a music major was the belief every aspect of music, the nuance and sense of beauty, can be explained away by Music Theory.  Arnold Schoenberg articulated this academic belief succinctly saying "music need not be performed any more than books need to be read aloud, for its logic is perfectly represented on the printed page"(1).  I reject the belief Music Theory is superior to music.  A work of music does not exist in score form; music is a temporal and physical art (2).  We cannot divorce music from performance.  Theory exists to assist music and not the reverse.  To reduce music down to only theory assumes our modern academic beliefs trump the centuries of musical expression which predate written musical notation and academic analysis.

My approach to Theology mirrors my approach to Music Theory.  I study Theology because God is awesome.  God is infinite in ways my finite mind will never conceive, and I love this about God.  I do not read Theology books and ponder aspects of God's character so I can somehow express comprehension or control over God.  I study Theology to grow deeper in my understanding and appreciation of who God is.  Any time my learning does not increase my wonder of God I know I am doing something wrong.  Theology must be rooted in the truth God is God and I am not.  If my Theology ever tempts me to think otherwise my Theology has become an idol.  Finding security in my knowledge, even knowledge of God, and not in God Himself is folly.  Therefore Theology must be studied with great humility and caution to safeguard it remains a true avenue of intimacy with God.

So why study Theology?  Why study Music Theory?  If studying both subjects has this inherent danger why bother at all?  Ignorance is bliss right?  But the danger is not in the learning and discovering; the risk is in my ability to twist this knowledge to my own end.  I do not need to fear Theology, but I should instead be wary of what I may be tempted to do or justify with my Theology.  Theology is not God.  Theory is not Music.

In the midst of all this let us remember God is worth knowing.  God is absolutely worth knowing.  He alone is the Infinite and Independent One.  For every moment of the rest of Eternity (a number I cannot and will not ever understand) I will be in awe of my God and learning more about Him.  The key is for me to ponder the mysteries of His infinitude and of my finitude.  God Himself said it best:
"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:9)

1. Arnold Schoenberg in Newlin 1980: 164.  Spoken in 1940.
2. Jeremy S. Begbie.  Theology, Music and Time. 2000. p 55-56.

The Good News is that God Does Not Need Us!

On a particularly existential day we may wonder about why it is God made humanity.  I know I have found myself contemplating this.  And the answer I have often heard given is that God made us because He needed us or was lonely or something to that effect.  This sentiment is usually well intended, but the truth is that God does not need us.   However weird this may seem, it is some of the best news ever.

One of the many beautiful facets of Trinity is that it disproves this idea that God is isolated.  With Trinity God is His own best friend on levels that a finite being as myself will never comprehend.  If God gets lonely He hangs out with Himself.  God also is perfect which means He does not need anything.  We cannot contribute to God's independence.  So why is this good news?  It is kind of like eating.

Now I like food and I enjoy eating.  But I also frequently find myself eating merely out of metabolic necessity, and on those occasions there is no enjoyment in eating.  Here food merely serves a utilitarian purpose.

And this is an example of why it is so awesome that God does not need us.  If God needed us like I need food, then it means we serve some utilitarian purpose.  But because God does not need us, we can be confident that God is free then to want us.  We are not filling some void in a perfect and independent God, we exist as the overflow of His love.  In His goodness and perfection of love God created us.  That is why we exist.  And that is really cool.

Colors

Did you ever notice how many colors there are?  How many hues of green alone are in the world.  Tints and shades, glossy and matte.  It is rather amazing the infinite number of colors around us.

It is Autumn once again and the trees are a menagerie of colors.  Each solitary leaf will itself journey through a range of colors.  It is beautiful to behold.

And what I find fascinating about all this color around me is the pure beauty of it.  Because honestly the world does not necessitate such vibrancy.  It would be quite possible for the world to have been created with half the colors we know or for there to only be one shade of orange.  Some aspects of creation are necessary because of the nature of God and His character.  "Love" is "good" in creation because God is good, God is love, and love is good.  So why so many colors?

As with everything the answer comes from the character of God, but it is an expression of personality.  It is not utility that spurs this myriad of shades.  We have so many colors simply because God is extravagant.  He does not just make a color, a few colors, but He made a number of colors beyond human comprehension.  God is a God of beauty.  He values things for more than utilitarian function.  He is a God of the concrete and the abstract.  And He chooses to express Himself in awe inspiring ways.  God is extravagant.

Consider God's love for us, each of us personally.  God loves us so much, beyond our understanding.  His love is independent, rooted in Himself.  Now consider my love for God.  My love is rather weak and feeble, and even at my strongest is still entirely dependent upon God and His love.  He initiates I respond.  This imbalance is okay, it is how eternity works.  God loves me with some extravagant and awesome love; a love that He alone is worthy of.  I love God with a small love; a love that is imperfect like me yet God somehow in His extravagance chooses to be blessed by.  How awesome is that?  God loves me as He alone deserves, in response I weakly love God back, and God chooses my love and receives it as more than it is.  It's crazy.  I don't understand it.  But God is extravagant.

Whenever you see colors around you may it remind you of how incredible God is and how extravagant His love is for you.

Why Theology Makes Me Uncomfortable

Of all subject matters, fields of learning, and disciplines nothing has the ability to make me so uncomfortable as the subject of Theology, the study of God.  Who is God and what is He like?

There is no entity with whom I am more dissimilar, yet everything about me is entirely dependent upon Him and His utter independence from anything but Himself.

God is infinite, I am finite.
God is omnipresent, I am not
God is Creator, I am creature.
God is holy.  I am not.

His character and nature grates on my fallen broken nature.  And I am better for it.

Apart from God revealing Himself I would be unable to know who He is, and yet He has made himself known even by His own Creation (Rom 1:19-20).  So I find myself upon the great journey of seeking and learning and discovering who God is, of intimacy with the Almighty Holy One.

One of the great things about God being infinite is that there is infinite to learn about Him.  We will therefore be able to learn and discover more about God for all of eternity, rather than after 736 trillion years coming to a full understanding of God and then spending the rest of eternity going over re-runs.

But a question arises

When your concept of God comes in conflict with God who wins?
Our theology and experiences vs. God and who He really is.
Theology will make us uncomfortable.

As fallen, finite, and imperfect creatures our understanding of God is inherently flawed this side of death.  I think I know what the nature of love is or the characteristics of sin, but the paradox of knowledge is that "the more you know the more you realize how little you know."  Believing that I truly and wholly understand an aspect of something violates one of the few things I can actually know, that I cannot fully comprehend anything.

At times I think the sum of all my knowledge, all my experience, all my learning truly boils down to this:

God is loving
God is faithful
and I am much smaller than I think

Theology makes me uncomfortable.  But I have learned that one of my greatest enemies is comfort.  It is so easy to settle for what I currently know rather than searching for a better and greater understanding.  To know just enough to deceive myself into thinking that I know God, and thus think that I do not need to keep truly seeking him.

If I am honest and faithful then studying Theology and who God is will make me uncomfortable.
But God is worth knowing, no matter what that takes.

Pragmatic Eschatology

One of the most complicated, convoluted, and therefore uninteresting parts of Theology is Eschatology (the study of the End Times or better phrased "Last Things")

And I will not pretend to decipher the symbols, numbers, and meanings of the apocalyptic writings of Daniel or Revelation.

But just because the details are perplexing does not mean that Eschatology is unimportant or a subject matter we are unaffected by.

The aspects of Eschatology I am most interested in are the actual "Last Things," where everything is going, how the story ends. Because if we look at the broad picture we find some intriguing details. The story arc of the Bible is from Paradise to Paradise. And it is a story of redemption. God made Creation "good", we messed it us, and ever since Genesis chapter 3 God's work has been a work of making "all things new" (Rev 21:5).

Revelation ends with the New Heaven and New Earth (Rev 21:1). Not only that but we see Heaven fully invading Earth (Rev 21:2) which fits with the Eschatology of the Major and Minor Prophets of the Old Testament. God is making all things new. For a wonderful depiction I suggest the description of the "Old Narnia" and "Real Narnia" at the end of the chapter "Further Up and Further In" of The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis.

So we know how things end; God makes all things new and perfect.

Selah

And that makes all the difference. Because God's ultimate vision, how things finally end up, defines everything. What we implicitly believe about the "Last Things" dictates and influences how we live now. Understanding where we are going clarifies where we are now like a compass pointing North.

The temptation can be to live like our objective is to be "saved" enough to go to Heaven when we die, but without the need to engage the world around us while we are here. It has been described as "being too heavenly minded to be any earthly good", and that is a horrible and counter-Christ paradigm. Jesus did not come to draw us out and isolate "Christians" from the world, but He came to be Emmanuel, "God with us" (Mt 1:22-23), and to engage this world. We are called not to be elitists in the world, but "light of the world" (Mt 5:14-16). If we believe that God is redeeming Creation, making all things new, then we have been invited to be a part of that process of renewal (2 Cor 5:17-21). God came back for each of us, but that does not mean we can be content to let His redemption stop with us.

Instead of being "too Heavenly minded to be any earthly good" we have to be Heavenly minded (truly and Eschatologically Heavenly minded) to be any earthly good.

So may you be guided North by God's awesome work of redemption into the "Last Things"

How glorious it will be to finally go home.

Selah

Problems with Humanity

I was talking with my friend Peter last night, our conversation covered a menagerie of topics, and one particular issue that we kept returning to was the various problems with humanity.

And while the pathologies of humanity a great in number and in complexity, I was struck by the simplicity of the answer.

I know the answer to all of our problems.

It's humility.

It's surrendering ourselves to God.

It's being holy as He is holy.

Our problem as fallen people is pride. We want to be what everything is about. But we are creatures. And we hate being creatures. We want to be creator.

We want to be God.

But we are not God

And by humility I mean to acknowledge the truth of reality and who we really are. Not what I want reality to be, not my relative truth, but the absolute truth as defined by the One who is able to define absolute truth.

For me humility means understanding and living according to the fact that I am not God.

For God humility means understanding and living according to the fact that He is God. He really is the Independent One upon whom all of Creation depends for existence.

So the answer to all of our issues is simple.

But it's impossible.

Because apart from God I hate being a creature.

Theology

This semester at Sac State I have the privilege of creating and teaching a class on Theology. The aim of the class is to give an overview of the character and nature of God. And such a subject brings up a lot of questions.

Theology (from the Gk: theologia, θεολογία,) is the study of God. It's a pretty big subject. But a cool thing about Theology is that one of its foundational principles is that God is knowable. He can be studied and interacted with. This may seem obvious but how wonderful this is given the alternative, that God is distant and unknowable. Unlike Deism Christianity believes that God is not some far distant creator who made the universe like a clock and is now watching it wind down. We can know God. We can be in relationship with God. God is near and discoverable. This is our hope, the fact that God has made Himself knowable to us.

In Jeremiah 29:12-14 the LORD declares "When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me." What glorious news is this!