Thousands of Starlings Dancing in the Air

Last week, because of a blog post by Abraham Piper, I became aware that there was a bird called a starling. I think they are now one of my favorite birds because when a bunch of them get together, they do things like this:

Piper quotes Time Magazine as saying:

No one knows why they do it. Yet each fall, thousands of starlings dance in the twilight above Gretna, Scotland. The birds gather in magical shape-shifting flocks called murmurations, having migrated in the millions from Russia and Scandinavia to escape winter’s bite. Scientists aren’t sure how they do it, either. Even complex algorithmic models haven’t yet explained the starlings’ acrobatics, which rely on the tiny bird’s quicksilver reaction time of under 100 milliseconds to avoid aerial collisions—and predators—in the giant flock.

How the Song of Songs Helps Us Better Understand Love for God

One of the books I'm reading for my Christian Ethics class this quarter is Ellen Davis's book Getting Involved With God: Rediscovering the Old Testament. She is basically looking at various books and passages in the Old Testament and revealing how important they are for us today. So far it has been an excellent book.

In one of the chapters, she explains how beneficial the Song of Songs is for the church today. She points out how we have often misunderstood this book and many of us consider it to be a little too racy to be in the Bible. However, the Song is incredibly beneficial to us because it speaks of divine love and sexual love as a healthy expression and desire in the midst of covenantal faithfulness.

One thing she points out how toward the end of the chapter is how the Song affirms that "longing for intimacy with God is a necessary desire for a healthy soul." She goes on to mention how there are two kinds of love of God. The first is grateful response to experiencing God's mercy, generosity, and blessing. This is frankly how I generally understand love for God and probably the way most of us do. However, look at how she explains this second love:

But there is another love that is even more precious. It arises in us not from anything God has done for us, but spontaneously, becuase our souls were made to delight simply in God's being, and God's being with us. One great modern mystic, Rav (Rabbi) Abraham Isaac Kook, taught that all the rich imagery of the Song of Songs exists precisely for the sake of making vividly real this rare love that does not derive form material benefits. The Song shows us love in its purest form.

i was struck by this because it's hard for me to think of times I don't express love for God apart from seeing his love or grace given to me. I'm reminded that God is worthy of my love purely because he is God, before I benefit from anything he gives me (including forgiveness, sonship, etc.). His majesty and glory and holiness and beauty are aspects that I need help seeing. I'm thankful that the Spirit is alive and is faithful to increase this type of love for him.

How I Wish the Homosexuality Debate Would Go

Trevin Wax created a great dialogue about how he wishes the homosexuality debate (in the media) would go. Thinking back to several interviews I've seen with prominent pastors who handle this issue poorly, I would love to see someone handle it in this way. Here's how he starts off:

Host: You are a Christian pastor, and you say you believe the Bible, which means you are supposed to love all people.

Pastor: That’s right.

Host: But it appears to me that you and your church take a rather unloving position when it comes to gay people. Are homosexuals welcome to come to your church?

Pastor: Of course. We believe that the gospel is a message relevant for every person on the planet, and we want everyone to hear the gospel and find salvation in Jesus Christ. So at our church, our arms are outstretched to people from every background, every race, every ethnicity and culture. We’re a place for all kinds of sinners and people with all kinds of problems.

Host: But you said there, “We’re a place for sinners.” So you do believe that homosexuality is sinful, right?

Pastor: Yes, I do.

Host: So how do you reconcile the command to love all people with a position on homosexuality that some would say is radically intolerant?

Pastor: (smiling) If you think my position on homosexuality is radical, just wait until you hear what else I believe! I believe that a teenage guy and girl who have sex in the backseat of a pick-up are sinning. The unmarried heterosexual couple living down the street from me is sinning. In fact, any sexual activity that takes place outside of the marriage covenant between a husband and wife is sinful. What’s more, Jesus takes this sexual ethic a step further and goes to the heart of the matter. That means that any time I even lust after someone else, I am sinning. Jesus’ radical view of sexuality shows all of us up as sexual sinners, and that’s why He came to die. Jesus died to save lustful, homo- and heterosexual sinners and transform our hearts and minds and behavior. Because He died for me, I owe Him my all. And as a follower of Jesus, I’m bound to what He says about sex and morality.

(...)

Host: Are you saying that you can’t be gay and Christian?

Pastor: No. I’m saying that you can’t be a genuine Christian without repentance. Everyone – including me – is guilty of sin, but Christianity hinges on repentance. We agree with God about our sin, and we turn from it and turn toward Jesus. When it comes to Christianity, this debate is not about homosexuality versus other sins. It’s about whether or not repentance is integral to the Christian life.

Read the whole thing

(via)

New Swithfoot Album: Vice Verses

Last Tuesday night, I saw Switchfoot perform at the Wiltern here in LA. It was the first time seeing them in concert, despite having been a fan of them for the last 13 years or so. It was an excellent show with tons of energy and creativity (including a spot on cover of Sabotage by the Beastie Boys!)

I'm amazed at how they seem to get better and better with each album, and heir latest album, Vice Verses, continues that trend. I highly recommend getting it ($8.99 on Amazon). Here are just a few of the songs that I'm really digging:

The War Inside:

Yeah, it's where the fight begins
Yeah, underneath the skin
Between these hopes and where we've been
Every fight comes from the fight within

Thrive:

I come alive when I hear you singing
But lately I haven't been hearing a thing
I get the feeling that I'm in between
A machine and a man who only looks like me

I try and hide it and not let it show
But deep down inside me I just don't know
Am I a man if I feel like a hoax?
The stranger in the mirror's been wearing my clothes...

No, I'm not alright
I know that I'm not right
Feel like I travel but I never arrive
I wanna thrive not just survive

Where I Belong:

On the final day I die
I want to hold my head up high
I want to tell You that I tried
To live it like a song

And when I reach the other side
I want to look You in the eye
And know that I've arrived
In a world where I belong

I am 2: Empowering Collective Transformation

My good friend Dan Bowling has recently started a non-profit called I am 2. It is aimed to meet the needs of children all over the world, but in a fresh and revolutionary way in order maximize impact. As Dan says, "Iam2.org employes the collective power of social networks to give individuals a simple, interactive, and viral way to support non-profits providing food, water and protection for children here and around the world."

Check out this great video to understand a little more what that means and consider supporting the movement.

iam2 from iam2 on Vimeo.

Also, check out the website.

Lecrae's story of God's intervention

If you don't know him, Lecrae is a fantastic rapper. I've been listening to him for the last couple of years and really have enjoyed his stuff. I had never heard his testimony before, so I was excited to see that I Am Second captured it.

Check it out here.

Being more amazed at Christ than of his love for us

I really liked this recent post from John Piper:

Believers in Jesus are precious to God (we're his bride!). And he loves us so much that he will not allow our preciousness to become our god.

God does indeed make much of us (adoption!), but he does so in a way that draws us out of ourselves to enjoy his greatness.

Test yourself. If Jesus came to spend the day with you, sat down beside you on the couch, and said, “I really love you,” what would you focus on the rest of the day that you spend together?

It seems to me that too many songs and sermons leave us with the wrong answer. They leave the impression that the heights of our joy would be in the recurrent feeling of being loved. “He loves me!” “He loves me!” This is joy indeed. But not the heights and not the focus.

What are we saying with the words “I am loved”? What do we mean? What is this “being loved”?

Would not the greatest, most Christ-exalting joy be found in watching Jesus all day and bursting with, “You’re amazing!” “You are amazing!”

• He answers the hardest question, and his wisdom is amazing.
• He touches a filthy, oozing sore, and his compassion is amazing.
• He raises a dead lady at the medical examiner’s office, and his power is amazing.
• He predicts the afternoon’s events, and his foreknowledge is amazing.
• He sleeps during an earthquake, and his fearlessness is amazing.
• He says, “Before Abraham was, I AM,” and his words are amazing.

We walk around with him utterly amazed at what we are seeing.

Is not his love for us his eagerness to do for us all he must do (including die) so that we can marvel at him and not be incinerated by him? Redemption, propitiation, forgiveness, justification, reconciliation — all these have to happen. They are the act of love. But the goal of love that makes those acts loving is that we be with him and see his jaw-dropping glory and be astounded. In those moments we forget ourselves and see and feel him.

Paste Magazine: Signs of Life Everywhere

I was a big fan of Paste Magazine from the first issue I read several years back. Their tagline, "Signs of Life in Music, FIlm, and Culture" has always struck a chord with me. I was very sad to learn that they had to stop printing the magazine last year due to financial issues. However, through their website and somewhat newly installed mPlayer, their reviews and articles are still very much alive and well.

From the latest issue of mPlayer, the editor Josh Jackson wrote an article that conveys so much of what I love about the magazine. Here's a few paragraphs about his personal journey with faith and how he has grown to see signs of life everywhere:

I’ve always been fascinated by the intersection of faith and arts. In fact, I tend to get most excited about each when it wanders into the realm of the other. When I went from an agnostic who sneered at religion to a fairly close-minded born-again Christian in high school, a few things didn’t sit well with me, despite my sudden assumption that easier answers were just a few chapters away in a Bible I was reading for the first time.

After a naïve but often-blissful spiritual high, doubt started trickling in. For a brief moment, I wondered if the music and arts which had served as my spiritual food long before I looked to religion might indeed be the corrupting source of nagging questions that begged for something more mysterious than the systematic theology I was being handed. One of my new teachers suggested we toss out albums that weren’t “glorifying God.” He offered up an Outfield album. I countered with a dubbed cassette containing XTC’s Skylarking on one side (with the lyric, “Dear God, I can’t believe in you”) and, tragically, the Pixies’ Doolittle on the other.

But when the “easy answers” didn’t satisfy, it was in the arts where I found the room for a God bigger than any fundamentalism or dogma. There weren’t many musicians dabbling in that strange no-man’s-land, but during my first semester of college—and one of my first writing gigs for the college paper—I came across Vigilantes of Love. For frontman Bill Mallonee, grace was like a battering ram, hammering at him from one side, but its twin on the other side was mystery. From him, I also discovered Mark Heard, a poet slumming in the Christian-music ghetto, overturning the money-changing tables from inside where he could. By the end of my freshman year, the fiction of Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy became as much my creeds and confessions as anything I heard on Sundays.

I’ve since felt closer to heaven via the music of Sigur Rós or the words of Josh Ritter; seeing Roberto Benigni give his son a childhood in a concentration camp in Life Is Beautiful; reading Dave Eggers’ mostly non-fiction account of Sudanese refugees in What is the What; or even playing through some of those epic Final Fantasy games.

I see snatches of the divine in the people all around me and, often more intensely, in the art that they’ve created. I still hold to many of the tenets of faith I was introduced to in college, but I’ve become comfortable knowing that my hold is likely to always be tenuous—that God and faith and life and all their big questions are much bigger than any answers we can grasp.

(...)

I may be strange for looking for echoes of a higher power in videogames, TV and pop songs, but I think that’s what our tagline “Signs of Life” has always meant to me, even if it’s an irreverent YouTube video that’s just going to bring a little laughter. Not every piece of art is going to be The Bicycle Thief or Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” But as far as I’m concerned, so much of pop culture is holy ground.

How the recovery model of spirituality has impacted me

I just finished a class that has probably impacted me more than any other in seminary thus far. It was called Spirituality and Recovery. It was looking at the meaning of spirituality in the context of the recovery process (or twelve step traditions). The professors (Dale Ryan and Matt Russell) basically believe that there is a recovery model of spirituality and that this model should be the main way we understand and practice the Christian life in community. It is a model that facilitates honesty, humility, grace, and reconciliation with one another.

I thought I'd share a few ideas from the class that have had a profound impact on me:

1. My spiritual poverty/brokenness is an occasion for God's blessing and love. God's grace and love is very real even when I'm hardened to sin, am not taking part in spiritual disciplines, and don't necessarily feel close to Him. I don't have to have it all together.
2. Intimacy comes through knowing and sharing your junk. In typical small group culture, intimacy takes time (sometimes years) as you begin to share your junk with people. In recovery culture, intimacy is immediate because everyone is bonded together through the understanding of their desperation and powerlessness over sin/addiction. I wish the church looked more like the recovery culture in this sense.
3. Believing is a result of belonging. The recovery culture emphasizes belonging long before you believe. The professors want to challenge the church to adopt this same mentality because the church can be too focused on "Who's in and who's out?" instead of including and loving people who aren't "orthodox" yet. Jesus told the disciples to "Come and see" a long time before He asked them "Who do you say that I am?"
4. I can't ultimately help people get better/healthy. Only God can. What I can do is listen, empathize, and love them despite their issues.
5. Focus on trusting God instead of trying to please Him. There is a (very) fine line between trusting God and performing, and trusting God is the only way to please Him. Sometimes trusting God feels like you're walking away from God or being irresponsible, because you have to let go of doing certain things or trying to fix yourself or others.
6. Honesty with our junk NOW helps people know God. People don't really care if God can do anything, they care about if He can do this thing. As pastors (and everyone else), we need to be specific about our struggles and sin in our lives now. This helps people to see God as real, not as abstract. This helps debunk the lie that the Christian life is all about victorious living, where all the scars are immediately healed.
7. Knowing Jesus doesn't equal no more issues. Our testimonies have often been 1) I was a screw-up, 2) I met Jesus, 3) now life is great. This is dishonest and does harm to others and to ourselves.
8. God wants to draw near when we sin. Matt Russell says, "God doesn't hate sin. God hates the separation of relationship that sin produces. Otherwise, sin becomes just a list of things we do." I'm still struggling theologically with that first sentence, but I still think it points to the truth that when we sin, God doesn't get disgusted with us and remove Himself until we confess. He loves us and longs for us to know His nearness. The presence of Christ is in the darkest parts of our hearts.
9. God is relational, not transactional. God is not mainly concerned with turning our badness into goodness. He is more concerned with our brokenness and separateness from Him and transforming it.
10. Making amends is a great way to understand repentance. Making amends is the 9th step in the 12 step process. You go to someone you have wronged or hurt in the past and tell them how you've wronged or hurt them. You don't ask for forgiveness (which can sometimes be coercive). You give the person space to say whatever they want, even if they get mad at you. And this process should be less about you and more about them.

With some of these things, I am still in process over what I think about them. Some of the ideas press up against long held beliefs. That's been a big part of my journey here at Fuller, trying to get my mind and heart open to truth, no matter how different it might seem to my current understanding.

I'll end with a couple of verses that our last class ended with. It's a great reminder that no matter how bad our past might seem to us, God is restoring us, loving us, and helping us be satisfied in Him. It comes from Joel 2:25-26:

I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten…You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame.

The Medium is the Message

I recently finished a communication class here at Fuller. One of the assigned readings was The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith, the Gospel, and Church by Shane Hipps. I thought the book was really interesting, especially the first half.

Hipps owes most of his thinking on media to Marshall McLuhan, who coined the phrase, "The medium is the message." This is the thought that the medium (or media) through which information comes (books, TV, Internet, phones, etc.) is often more important for your message than the content itself.

In his book, Hipps is mainly writing about how the church is shaped by media. However, his thoughts can be applied universally to most other areas of life. Here are a few thoughts:

When we talk about media and technology as tools for the church, we assume they are simply conduits or pipelines useful for dispensing the gospel...

However, McLuhan’s simple yet provocative statement ‘The medium is the message’ issues a direct challenge in this understanding of media. He writes, ‘Our conventional response of all media, namely that it is how they used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. The content of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.' In other words, media are much more than neutral purveyors of information. They have the power to shape us regardless of content and thus cannot be evaluated solely upon their use.

His point is that we often give little thought to how different media impact us. For example, he talks about how we are often oblivious to TV when we watch it. We don't understand that it is reducing our capacity for abstract thought, making us prefer intuition and experience over logic and reasoning, thus reviving elements of an individualistic culture.

To drive this point home, Hipps quotes a very hyperbolic metaphor of McLuhan:

The content or message of any particular medium has about as much importance as the stenciling on the casing of an atomic bomb.

Hipps' point is that "the medium has far more impact on the culture than its content." I think it's so very important to notice the ways in which different media shapes the way we understand the world, not only for our benefit, but for the benefit of others as we seek to communicate truth.

I owe a great deal to my friend Roy for helping think through these things for the first time a few years back. Also my friend Scott has a lot of great thoughts on how technology is shaping us at his blog (particularly this post and this one). Also, if you're interested, here are a few other resources I would recommend:

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman (one of my favorites)
The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman
Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith by Shane Hipps

Blessed are the poor in spirit...

This past Monday, I started a class called Spirituality and Recovery. It is looking at the meaning of spirituality in the context of twelve step traditions. The class has challenged my thinking in a lot of ways, and I believe for the better.

One thought that has been very helpful to me comes from a book called Soul Repair, cowritten by one of my professors, Dale Ryan. He looks at Jesus's words in Matthew 5:3 which says,

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

I think Dr. Ryan's reflections on this verse are both true and comforting. He says:

"That statement does not match the instincts and expectations nurtured in us by our toxic spirituality, but it appears to be true. Our spiritual poverty is, in the eyes of God, an opportunity for blessing and not an occasion for judgment, shame or rejection."

These last few days, I've been able to see with more clarity that I really don't have to have it all together for God to love me. When my time in the Word is dry or non-existent, when my prayer life is in a similar state, and when I don't experience God's nearness...that really is okay.

For much of my spiritual life, I have been in performance mode. In high school, being a good Christian meant not cussing and being really nice to people. In college, I learned to base by standing with God on how much time I spent in the Word and how much Scripture I memorized (even though I "knew" and "believed" that that wasn't true). After college, I felt burnt out and have experienced a low level of guilt about my spiritual state for the last six years, thinking I'm not where I should be.

I should clarify that I don't want to give up right beliefs and helpful practices because they have been tainted with performance-based thinking. It hasn't been all bad. I've experienced God's grace in profound ways over the years, through the very things that were tainted with a performance based mentality. It's just that I'm starting to realize the grace and love of God in my spiritual poverty. Not just when I know my sin and am broken over it, but even when I'm too hardened to care.

How Using Smartphones Can Consume Us

A recent Chicago Tribune article looks at the problem of people constantly using smartphones while in a theater. It explains how most people do it without really understanding that it's a distraction for others. Commenting on people texting and tweeting during his shows, comedian Bill Burr wittingly remarked, "half the world is acting as if they're documenting events for a magazine they're not working for."

Here are a couple of interesting paragraphs that talk about the chemical reaction going on in our brains and its effects:

"There are studies about the craving we have for new information. It's pretty clear that when we get a new little piece of information, our brains release some dopamine — which is the neurotransmitter chemical that is how the brain encourages us to do things; it's also the chemical implicated in most addictions. And as you get rewarded by that kind of pleasure of getting a new piece of information, you want to repeat that. … There is something very deep and very primitive in our minds that wants us to gather every little bit of information around us."

(...)

Reached by phone, Greenfield explained the potential downside of all that dopamine. "You're on constant high alert, your adrenaline is rushing because you're clicking and you're texting and as soon as you respond a new thing flashes up. In terms of human beings up until now, this is an unusually fast-paced interactive activity. And we know that dopamine dampens an important frontal part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex," which can cause people to behave more recklessly and with less empathy toward others, she said.

"What our mobile screens seem to encourage is going into a mode that is a rather early stage for the human brain — it's one that small children are in, which has a strong sensory focus and it's very exciting and arousing. This is very different from adult human cognition normally."

But both Greenfield and Zecker point to psychological factors relating to self-worth. Or as Greenfield put it: "One can point to things like Twitter and wonder why people say, 'Look at me doing this' and so on. It reminds me of a small child: 'Look at me, mummy.' Because if you don't look at me and give me feedback, I won't exist."

Something to think about as we should all be considering how to limit the amount of distractions in our lives and also not be consumed with telling the world where we are and what we are doing.

I also thought Nicholas Carr's (author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains) final remark of the article was spot-on:""We have trained ourselves to multitask even when we're relaxing."

(via)

Francis Chan on hell and how to have conversations about it

With all of the recent discussions about hell, Francis Chan talks about his own struggle to find truth here. Apparently, his new book, Erasing Hell, will be coming out in a couple of weeks to discuss this issue.

The video below is a sort of promo for the book and is well worth watching. I love his humility. He talks about wanting to give people truth and not wanting to lead people astray with bad theology. But he also knows that, in many ways, God is a mystery whose thoughts and ways are much higher than and beyond ours, so we can't always know or understand everything. He also talks about how we can sometimes carelessly and heartlessly discuss theological issues, and forget we are dealing with real people.

Check it out:

A Critique of Bell's Love Wins

I know I'm a little late to the game in reading the book and posting my thoughts. The firestorm that this book created a couple of months ago seems to have died down a little bit.

I thought about posting my thoughts during all the hoopla back in March and April. I had read a few reviews of the book and seen a couple of interviews Rob Bell did, and felt like I should respond like every other Christian seemed to be doing. I'm glad I waited. For one, now I've actually read the book and can comment on the primary source. I also think my thoughts now are much less emotionally charged then they would have been.

I'm not going to give a thorough review. If you want that, Kevin DeYoung has a good (but lengthy) review here. Here are a few of my thoughts:

1. Bell presents God as only loving. There was no talk of God's holiness or justice.
2. He makes a caricature of God's anger, completely dismissing the biblical idea of God's anger towards sin.
3. He suggests (though never explicitly) that all people will eventually spend all eternity with God in heaven. This goes against biblical teaching and the understanding of salvation throughout the entire history of the church.
4. The one positive aspect of the book is how Bell points out that God is more loving that we tend to believe, and there is a wideness in God's mercy that we should be excited about.

Ultimately, I believe this book will do more harm than good. It moves away from a God-centered view of reality to a more man-centered perspective. It makes our sin of rejecting God on a daily basis to look like it's no big deal. And finally, it seems to move away from sound doctrine to teaching that itching ears want to hear (2 Tim. 4:3).

By the way, here's the The Love Wins trailer that started all the commotion back in February. And here's Bell's interview with Martin Bashir that is really interesting.

Letting the Clean Breeze of the Centuries Blow Through Our Minds

I recently started reading On the Incarnation by Saint Athanasius. It was written about 1700 years ago (in 319). Appropriately, C.S. Lewis writes the brilliant introduction and gives fantastic advice about reading older books. Many of you have probably heard bits of this quote before, but I wanted to share it again its fuller context. I have joyfully lived by this philosophy ever since I first heard it (I've actually started having the opposite problem -- not reading many new books). I hope it will encourage you in the same way:

There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium...The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him...It has always been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.

(...)

...Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old...A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light...It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books..Where [modern books] are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.

The Tree of Life

Last Friday, Brittany and I went to see The Tree of Life in Hollywood. I've been anticipating this movie for a quite a while. It is the mysterious director Terrence Malick's fifth film in almost forty years. His other movies include Badlands (1973), Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998), and The New World (2005).

Aesthetically, The Tree of Life is the most beautiful film I've ever seen. Malick uses unique camera angles and gorgeous, natural imagery to create a true work of art. And I'm not quite sure what his worldview is, but it is easy tell that he is very influenced by Christian themes.

Before you go see the movie, you should be aware of some things. It might feel slow at times. There is a break in the middle that shows what creation might have looked like. And there are dinosaurs... briefly. Brett McCracken gives some helpful pointers on how to watch it. The most helpful for me was to "let it roll over you." As you're watching don't focus on trying to "figure it out." Just receive it as is. I think you will find that you will enjoy the experience.

Also, here's the end of Paste's review that summarizes the basic idea of the movie:

...between shots of bubbling lava, there’s a family that you come to care deeply about, including the very flawed patriarch. The themes are grand and punctuated by a sermon on Job in the middle: Why do bad things happen to good people? What’s the value of selflessness? Do the sins of the father need to be revisited by the son? Malick touches on creation and evolution, the existence of heaven and the purpose of life, but does so as much through the humble world of Waco, Texas, in summertime, as through the direct questions from a boy to his Creator that transition between epochs. It’s as much a meditation as a narrative, asking a tremendous amount of patience from viewers and rewarding that patience with something entirely new.

This trailer should whet your appetite:

How to respond when the rapture doesn't happen

Justin Taylor pointed out some wise and convicting words from Eric Landry. He encourages us to not mock those who thought the rapture was coming today, but to be ready to love on them. I am reminded that nothing I believe is apart from God's grace, so I have no reason to boast, or laugh at others for believing differently than me. Here's what Eric said:

We must be very careful about how we respond. Will we join our friends at the “Rapture Parties” that are planned for pubs and living rooms around the nation? Will we laugh at those who have spent the last several months of their lives dedicated to a true but untimely belief? What will we say on Saturday night or Sunday morning?

History teaches us that previous generations caught up in eschatological fervor often fell away from Christ when their deeply held beliefs about the end of the world didn’t pan out. While Camping must answer for his false teaching at the end of the age, Reformational Christians are facing a pastoral problem come Sunday morning: how can we apply the salve of the Gospel to the wounded sheep who will be wandering aimlessly, having discovered that what they thought was true (so true they were willing to upend their lives over it) was not? If this isn’t true, they might reason, then what other deeply held beliefs and convictions and doctrines and hopes might not be true?

It’s at this point that we need to be ready to provide a reasonable defense of our reasonable faith. Christianity is not founded upon some complex Bible code that needs years of analysis to reveal its secret. Christianity is about a man who claimed to be God, who died in full public view as a criminal, and was inexplicably raised from the dead three days later appearing to a multitude of witnesses. When his followers, who witnessed his resurrection, began speaking of it publicly, they connected the prophecies of the Old Testament to the life and death and resurrection of this man who claimed the power to forgive sins. This is the heart of the Christian faith, the message that deserves to be featured on billboards, sides of buses, and pamphlets all over the world. It is also the message that needs to be reinvested into the hearts and lives of those who found hope and meaning in Harold Camping’s latest bad idea.

Funny interview by an honest Florida football player

Abraham Piper pointed out a hilarious interview on his blog. It's between a Gator County reporter and Ja'Jaun Story, an incoming wide receiver soon to play at Florida. His honesty is pretty amazing and ends up saying some pretty funny stuff. For instance:

Q: What’s your most embarrassing moment on the field?
A: I was running, I was gonna score a touchdown and then some kid came behind me and grabbed my pants down, and my pants came down, so it was pretty embarrassing. I think I turned red a little bit. My booty was out, it was pretty embarrassing.

Q: If you were a character from a Disney movie, who would you be and why?
A: Aladdin, I think he’s pretty cool, he’s like easy going, cool guy, and he has Jasmine. I like how he wears his little vest with it open.

And here's the best part:

Q: What’s the most played song on your iPod?
A: Most played…I don’t know, I want to say Katy Perry, “Fireworks.” It’s intense.

Q: What’s your favorite pre-game ritual?
A: Well, I take a doodoo. Before every game I doodoo.

Q: That’s your FAVORITE pregame ritual?
A: Well, that’s the only thing I do. That’s one thing I have to do before every game, or I won’t feel energy, and I’ll just feel slow. When I do I just feel light on my feet and everything, and I feel faster, so that’s what I do.

Q: You know I’m going to write this in a story right?
A: Well, I mean, that’s what it is. I doodoo and then listen to Katy Perry.

I feel like this is a type of guy I'd love to hang out with. Click here to read the whole interview.

Depression in different cultures

Ed Welch has another interesting article on the CCEF blog, this time about depression. He notes that depression looks different in all parts of the world. He points out that the following are all different ways of describing depression:

A Nigerian who describes a peppery feeling in his head
A Chinese farmer who complains of shoulder and stomach aches
A Korean woman who speaks of burning in her stomach
An Iranian who identifies tightness in his chest
An American who feels interminably sad

He goes on to talk about how you interpret depression (or any pain) differently. Great perspective:

Here is one conclusion from this type of research: depression is not simply a universal pattern of neuronal firing caused by predetermined genetic combinations. At least, it consists of an experience that is shaped by a cultural narrative. Depression has a story overlaid on it. In some cultures the story suggests that the experience is normal and is part of the process of developing character and strength. In others, such as our own, it is a brain pathology that must be treated quickly or it will leave the victim incapacitated.

Your interpretation of pain affects the experience of your pain. If the pain in your chest is from a slightly pulled muscle, you are proud that you are working out. If you believe it is from a tumor or incipient heart failure, it will hurt much worse.

If you experience peculiar sadness, and you are persuaded that God is with you and, through his love, is making you increasingly fruitful, your emotional limp will be less noticeable. But if your hardships are merely neuronal, there is nothing you can do except hope for the right combination of medications.

(...)

We turn to what is universal. We turn to what goes deeper than culture—the God revealed to us by Scripture. One of the beauties of God’s revelation is that we know (1) in this world there will be trouble, and (2) we don’t have to know the cause of the trouble in order to help each other know the comfort of Christ, grow in our confidence in his promises, and fruitfully abide in him. This is for everyone, in every culture.

Busyness in Life

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