key concepts & core rants...

Wednesday

Conclusive Evidence: Jesus Was A Shark!

I've been saying for years that the Christology-debate has left out an important component: Jesus was fully God, fully human, and fully shark.

At last! Conclusive evidence has proved that sharks can and do procreate through virgin birth:

ScienceDaily.com reports...
Scientists have confirmed the second-ever case of a “virgin birth” in a shark, indicating once again that female sharks can reproduce without mating and raising the possibility that many female sharks have this incredible capacity...

The phenomenon of “virgin birth” occurs when a baby is conceived without male sperm having first fertilized the female’s eggs, and has been proven in some bony fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds. In the type of parthenogenesis seen in these sharks, known as automictic parthenogenesis, the newly forming pup acquires one set of chromosomes when the mother's chromosomes split during egg development. But instead of uniting with similarly split chromosomes from sperm, as occurs in sexual reproduction, the mother’s set is paired with a copy of itself...

Click here to read more.

Tuesday

Lord, Where is Your Presence?

Sometimes I wonder if we - the church - forgot to ask for God's presence to "go with us." Or did we forget to keep asking? Yes, yes, we have the Holy Spirit, but...

Exodus 33:12-16
Moses and the Glory of the LORD
Moses said to the LORD, "You have been telling me, 'Lead these people,' but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, 'I know you by name and you have found favor with me.' If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people."

The LORD replied, "My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest."

Then Moses said to him, "If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?"

Look closely: Moses asked, "How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish [us]?"

How does the world distinguish us? Is it by goodness, grace, love, justice, hope, peace and joy? No? It's by kitschy bumper stickers? And conservative politics? And angry picket signs? And unnaturally upbeat radio personalities?

Did the presence of God help those winning features shine? Or have we been trying to distinuish ourselves without the presence of the Lord? Through our own feeble, nearsighted efforts?


Lord, may you go with us, that we may be distinguished for good in this world. Amen.

Ecumenical Surfers & Holy Darwinist Manifestation...

My friend Cam is living in Jerusalem, and getting an eyeful of the rest of this beautiful world. Lately, he's been noticing just how much the world is aware of spiritual and religious matters and questions.

Human beings are nearly-obsessed with the spiritual realm (especially when we're pretending not to be).

Cam said:
Perhaps it is my location in this ancient city, but it seems that everything I see these days is connected to religion. At first it seemed that religion was becoming a larger part of the public narrative, but I’m beginning to think that my eyes are just picking it out of the morass of information more readily than it used to. It is not unlike scanning a crowd of people looking for a familiar face. You don’t analyze the facial features of each person. Rather, the mind is trained to pick out the tiniest detail of familiarity, and it focuses in on that. Thus... in every conversation, every lecture, every page of news I see, I seem to pick up on... religion more than anything else...
Click here to read more.

Monday

Disney: "Gay Day" for Miley Cyrus Fans!

My friend James, a grad student at Fuller Theological Seminary, wrote a pretty funny post about a recent trip to Disneyland.


He writes:

"...Not only was it Miley Cyrus’ Sweet Sixteen birthday party but it was also the 11th annual Anaheim Disney Gay Day.

It was kind of interesting to see these two groups mixing together... You had literally thousands of gay men all dresssed in red shirts to show that they were in fact there for Gay Day. There were equally as many young tweens who - at the mere mention of Miley Cyrus - would surely die with excitment. By observing these two groups for a day I have come to a number of conclusions.

First, I am scared of Miley Cyrus and I think that she might be a cult leader. There were ravenous packs of crazed little girls moving like a swarm of locust throughout Disneyland devouring anything Cyrus as well as sending churro vendors running for the hills...

I also though it was incredibly useful that you could identify people based on the color of their shirts. You could glance across a crowd that day, and discern that the large group of men in red shirts were there for Gay Day, and not just a large group of Hannah Montana devotees (although they could have been both, I guess).

I think that we should use clothes more to signify what we are about. I am not advocating the wearing of t-shirts with Christian slogans, but the use of clothing to make it easier to judge people. Judging people already comes easily to most people, but this would make it much easier...

Click Here to read more.

Saturday

Buddhist Quakers... (arguing isn't a requirement)

I was listening to NPR late last night and heard mention of a "Quaker Buddhist." I didn't have time to write down the name referenced (nor have I gone onto Oregon Public Broadcasting's website to try to find it) but I found this fascinating blog, dedicated to exploring the intersections of Quaker Christian spirituality, and Buddhism...



It reminds me of my readings of The Good Heart, the Dalai Lama's teachings on Jesus. The book really revolves around a Buddhist-Christian dialogue and includes both the parallels and divergences of each spiritual worldview. A great read!

Something the Dalai Lama says in the book resonates with me. He said: "If after reading this book, a Christian says, 'I want to be a Buddhist,' then I have failed. I will have been successful if the Christian says, 'I want to be a better Christian.'"

How gracious! In seminary class on prayer and reconciliation, one classmate said, "My friend says she believes in Buddhism. I just can't be okay with that. I can say that I agree with her about some things, but I have to point out where her beliefs contradict Scripture..."

Really? As a Christian, we HAVE to point out what's wrong with other belief systems? We have to point out our differences to feel comfortable? I know, I know. I grew up as a militant evangelical. I know how that little Jesus Soldier pops up in the gut. But that's not really Jesus.

As Christians, we are not obligated to argue. Wow, does that feel freeing? Did you just experience a weight lifted off your shoulders? I did. Whew. It's beautiful to know I can have spiritual friendships with folks - and I don't have to be an asshole. What if I actually learned something true from someone of another religion? What if Jesus is speaking through Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Star Trek Fans? Suddenly the world gets a lot more interesting...

Tuesday

I'm Afraid of the Truth...

Pickypants commented:
The only thing dangerous about questions is the fear that you approach the answers with. Sounds like you are unafraid of the truth, which is the best place to be if you are asking these kinds of questions.


Actually, I've got all sorts of fear! Scripture says, "Perfect love casts out fear. Whoever fears has not been made perfect in love," (1 John 4:18) but I've got a long way to go toward any kind of perfection.

These questions scare the hell out of me, and so do their answers. In fact, the prospect of finding out what the truth realy is - I confess - brings a little fear into my heart. But I feel somewhat justified, reminded in Philippians 2:12 to "work out your salvation in fear and trembling." Good, fear is part of the process.

But somehow, authenticity demands I keep asking the questions. It's part of who I am. Here's what allows me to keep asking, even when it seems dangerous, impious or reckless: I have faith in the One who knows me and calls me by name. I don't know everything there is to know about this God. Or even Jesus. But in the same way, I love and trust my wife and would put my life in her hands. There are parts of her I will never fully know. If I were to one-day find that she had changed her name years before we met - I wouldn't stop loving her. I wouldn't believe her love was a lie. I would say, "oh, I've been calling you Jenny and your birth name is Oprah. Which would you like me to call you, sweetheart? "

That's the conversation I plan on having with God if I find out God's been using an alias...

Saturday

"Uh Oh": The Genealogy of Jesus...

So the genealogy of Jesus is "problematic." That's probably not news to many of you. But I'll demonstrate how intellectually lazy I can be: 3 or 4 years ago I got to thinking about the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew and how Christ's lineage back to King David goes through Joseph, Mary's husband.

Did I not notice that before? With 26 years of Christendom under my belt, had I somehow overlooked that? The problem is, as Christians we aren't raised to thnk critically about the Scriptures. As children, we're told simplified Bible stories. Maybe it's not out of fear of tough questions, perhaps it's just laziness. In any case, I asked a pastor-friend about it back then: "how do we posit Jesus from the line of David if he was the product of immaculate conception?"

"Well that's the genealogy from Matthew. The genealogy in Luke is through Mary's line," he answered.

Again, I didn't take the time to actually follow up and look. I get lazy. So several years would go by before I'd take this seminary New Testament class and re-approach the question (shows you how often I read through the Gospels...).

Here's the thing:

  • Matthew 1:15-17
    "...Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ." Except that would mean nothing less than Jesus was adopted into that bloodline.

  • Luke 3:23-24
    "Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melki, the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph..." Hmmm... I don't see Mary anywhere here. There are different names linked in this family line, but that's not all that problematic. I history of ancient Jewish genealogies shows that names were regularly dropped for a number of reasons.


Now I have no hard feelings or even disrespect toward the pastor who told me Luke offered Mary's heritage. For some reason, that's been an old theological argument, although there is little that can be used to defend it, other than the alternate names listed in the line - which is far more easily explained through the nature of Jewish genealogical recording.

What's troubling is that nothing in either lineage links Mary to the family line of David. Jesus would have to be either (a) adopted into David's line, which causes problems for Old Testament prophesy, or (b) actually be the son of Joseph. Which is a little scary to consider. What, now I'm starting to sound like Borg?

Mark gives no account of Jesus' birth.

John records this statement from Philip: "We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." (John 1:45)

So now I'm going to do my research paper for this New Testament class on the genealogies of Jesus and the various scholarly and theological positions taken.

In the beginning of his book Velvet Elvis, Rob Bell writes...

“What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archeologists find Larry’s tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births? But what if, as you study the origin of the word ‘virgin’ you discover that the word ‘virgin’ in the gospel of Matthew actually comes from the book of Isaiah, and then you find out that in the Hebrew language at that time, the word ‘virgin’ could mean several things. And what if you discover that in the first century being ‘born of a virgin’ also referred to a child whose mother became pregnant the first time she had intercourse? What if that spring were seriously questioned? Could a person keep on jumping? Could a person still love God? Could you still be a Christian? Is the way of Jesus still the best possible way to live? Or does the whole thing fall apart?…If the whole faith falls apart when we reexamine and rethink one spring, then it wasn’t that strong in the first place, was it?


I'm not saying I don't believe in the Virgin Birth. But yes, if I found out that "the truth" was something slightly other than what I'd been raised to believe or understand, I would still love God. I would still believe in Christ Jesus as Lord. My personal connection to God, through the Holy Spirit, has managed to survive an awful lot of doubt. The Spirit of the Living God is alive and real and present. But these are dangerous questions...