Tragic

I'm not even sure what to say about something this tragic. If the school doesn't fire this teacher then there is something very wrong with the world. 

http://www.breitbart.tv/html/103693.html

shalom, matt

I...

i am: burning discs off my iTunes and working on this list.

i think: the animals are conspiring against us.

i know: that I am a mess right now.

i want: to not be a mess right now.

i have: a dream…oh, wait…Martin Luther King, Jr. already had one. Ummm…I have too many guitar pedals.

i wish: I were living communally.

i hate: the Patriots.

i miss: Arrested Development, and sometimes I miss being a youth minister.

i fear: losing my family.

i feel: like writing a song.

i hear: my son playing video games.

i smell: my wife fixing leftovers, and I think my son just farted.

i crave: a Dr. Thunder.

i search: Amazon for cheap books and music.

i wonder: if I’ll ever grow up and stop being a d-bag.

i regret: one or two bad choices I made as a teenager that are still affecting me.

i love: my wife and son.

i ache: for wholeness.

i care: about the marginalized.

i always: want more.

i am not: doing anything productive at the moment.

i believe: in a better way.

i dance: rarely, but I play a lot of air guitar and air drums.

i sing: constantly in my car.

i don't always: finish my “honey-do” lists.


i fight: the law…and the law wins.

i write: not as often as I’d like to.

i win: video games against the computer.

i lose: video games against my brother.

i never: listen to rap music.

i confuse: more easily than I should for a 31 year old. 


i listen:  to music that doesn’t suck.

i can usually be found: on the computer.

i am scared: that I might not be what God wants me to be.

i need: some help…interested?

i am happy about: my life in general if not all the specifics.

shalom, matt

Dude...Jump!

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Ephesians and Throat Punching

If I wasn’t a proponent of non-violence and the way of Jesus I would take people who fight over predestination and free will outside, line them up, and one by one punch them in the big throat. Since I am advocating using non-violent means of revolution and persuasion I will instead give them a stern talking to and a vigorous wag of my index finger. You see, few arguments in Christendom irritate me to the point of insanity more than the free-will/predestination argument (end times arguments top the list. Don’t get me started on all the non-violent gesturing and metaphorical throat-punching I would do to those people). It doesn’t take a Rhodes scholar or an honors GED to realize that everyday we make choices based on our free will to choose one course of action over another. Some would argue that those choices are pre-ordained, chosen for us, that God has laid them out on the buffet of life and we are simply grabbing the tongs and making the selection. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe…sort of. I don’t know, nor do I care really. It’s no that vital to my life to know if I’m choosing or being chosen for. Sometimes it feels like I’m choosing and sometimes it feels like I’m being chosen for. And both of those feel right. Interesting.

I bring this all up for a reason. My house church/group/thingy is studying Ephesians. Chapter one contains some of the most abused passages on predestination/free-will in the Bible. Here is a selection of some of those passages from the NASB:

…just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world… (v.4)

…He predestined us to adoption as sons… (v.5)

…having been predestined according to His purpose… (v.11)

Obviously, quite a bit of chosen/predestined language here. I made the comment while we were discussing this section that maybe this passage isn’t trying to establish a doctrine of predestination at all. Maybe Paul is saying something abut God here, something bigger than doctrine and arguments for predestination. This passage is a doxology of praise of what God has done. Notice the emphasis on God doing in the passage:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms…For He chose us…he predestined us…he has freely given us…In Him we have redemption…in accordance with God’s grace that he lavished on us…he made known to us…which he purposed in Christ… (vv.3-10, emphasis mine, NIV translation used)

“Why all the chosen language?” you may be asking. My theory is that Paul is using limited human language and descriptors to help us get our minds around a great mystery, namely, that it is God who does everything. Later on in chapter 2 Paul writes that we are saved by God’s work (grace) and God gives us the faith to accept that reality (vv.2:8-9). From beginning to end it is God doing it all. The passage at hand here keeps reiterating over and over that it is all God’s doing.

To me the passage is full of beautiful imagery of a God who, through His Son, has chosen the world, the way a pimply-faced 16-year old chooses a girl to ask to the dance (although without the embarrassing, nervous flatulence and flop sweat). And He chooses us in love. For no other reason under the sun does God reach down and take us as His divine dance partner than grace-filled love.

Paul was right in praising Him, eh?

Paul uses chapter one of Ephesians to set the stage for his instructions that follow. He is reminding them of what God has done for them, drawing them to praise, and then offering them instruction in how to live in response to God’s grace. “This is who you are, what God has done; this is how you then live,” Paul is saying. Paul is not establishing doctrine here; he’s not teaching anything; he is leading them in worship.

May we be led also.

shalom, matt