I went to an Intervarsity meeting yesterday. The IV group at UNH meets on thursday nights, and because of band rehearsal I haven't had a chance to go. We read the second half of Mark 1, "manuscript style", where they just give you a page of text with the verse numbers removed. It is something I have only ever heard of Intervarsity doing. Must be some kind of centralized training.
Here are two things I gleaned from the study:
Mark 1:35-37:
"And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he[Jesus] departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, and they found him and said to him, 'Everyone is looking for you.'"
I think that is fantastic foreshadowing for the next 2,000 years of history.
There are two ways to spin that.
1: Everyone is looking for Jesus.
2: Jesus' disciples keep trying to find Jesus and then telling him, "everyone is looking for you".
But Jesus keeps leaving and going to a solitary place to pray. These other people did not look for Jesus, his disciples did. Perhaps we too much have the mindset that everyone is looking for Jesus, when in fact, everyone is not, and it is the job of the disciples to tend to the ministry.
A little bit later in Mark 1, Jesus heals a leper. It's really pretty neat, because after he heals the man, Jesus instructs him to tell no one what happened, but to "go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for proof to them."(Mark 1:44)
Don't tell anyone that Jesus healed you, but follow the law that Moses wrote concerning leprosy. (Which is in Leviticus 14)
I think that we have forgotten some of this.
People who are not christians need proof of what Jesus does in our lives, whether it's curing leprosy or just some emotional healing. We need to show them proof in their terms.
Creating christian radio stations and an entire genre of books called "Religious Inspiraton" doesn't quite cut it. Heck, there's a whole section of Barnes and Noble for "Christian Fiction". What the junk is that?
Far too often, instead of showing people proof for Jesus on the terms of the law, christians show them the proof for Jesus by being lunatics.
Gay marriage is a terrific subject for this. Instead of being reasonable and showing the world that Jesus can heal broken families, the Church has for a large part fought a losing political battle that has alienated millions of people. The Church's definition of Marriage is not political. It is religious. Have marriage ceremonies in the Church. But for crying out loud, let gay people have hospital visiting rights.
Nonchristians do not appreciate you bringing your religious beliefs into politics, especially when it appears to impede the progress of social justice, which is something that Jesus particularly cared about.
Bring the world some proof on their own terms, within their "law".
Friday, February 24, 2012
Friday, February 3, 2012
Complicated Explanations
The most profound quote I heard this week was from my stage lighting teacher. He's an old guy who has clearly done theater for his entire life, stagecraft and lighting and all that drudgery. "I remember working 62 hour days." Technical theater indeed.
But he was going over some terminology in class and had this to say:
"When you don't really understand something, you can only explain it in complicated ways."
That is to say, when you really understand something, you can explain it easily, and could write the Simple Wikipedia article about it. But when you don't understand something and someone asks you to explain it, you find yourself BSing some sort of answer that sounds like you know what you're talking about.
Example, I could probably explain calculus to a middle school student, because everything I've done in school for 4 years has been based on calculus. I could not, however, explain to you Spanish grammar. I could probably fake it because i long ago studied latin, but I really know nothing about spanish.
This observation is important to me because it really makes sense of so many "complicated" things in the world.
Economics, politics, theology, non-newtonian physics, the history of ancient cultures, global warming, global hunger, the weather. These things appear very complicated. There are all sorts of scientists dedicated to studying them, writing textbooks about them, debating the importance of different theories.
But the bottom line is, no one really knows how the economy works.
And that is dangerous for two reasons: One, lots of people have successfully convinced politicians that they do, in fact, know how the economy works. And Two, because of this, people/government try to control the economy based on their inaccurate models that don't really work. But this regulation is complicated because that is the only way people know how to explain the economy. The result is things like housing bubbles, debt crises, and inflation.
How about theology?
There are disgustingly long books written about theology. You can devote your entire life to just studying a single religion, and you would never even know what the guy down the street believes. Theology is complicated because it is invented by people to describe things that we don't actually understand. Think about the Romans. They had hundreds of gods, all responsible for little things in daily life, and the result was a ridiculously complicated set of social observances to make sure you didn't offend any deity.
Now, there is nothing wrong with studying complicated things. But I believe that there are far too many people out there who talk like they know more than they do.
As an engineering student, I am surrounded by other students who think they understand how transistors work, but really, no one knows for sure why electrons behave the way they do.
This is one of the coolest things about Jesus. He said simple things. Short sentences. Little stories. Because He actually understood what was going on, so He could put it in simple terms. And christians have been complicating it ever since.
But he was going over some terminology in class and had this to say:
"When you don't really understand something, you can only explain it in complicated ways."
That is to say, when you really understand something, you can explain it easily, and could write the Simple Wikipedia article about it. But when you don't understand something and someone asks you to explain it, you find yourself BSing some sort of answer that sounds like you know what you're talking about.
Example, I could probably explain calculus to a middle school student, because everything I've done in school for 4 years has been based on calculus. I could not, however, explain to you Spanish grammar. I could probably fake it because i long ago studied latin, but I really know nothing about spanish.
This observation is important to me because it really makes sense of so many "complicated" things in the world.
Economics, politics, theology, non-newtonian physics, the history of ancient cultures, global warming, global hunger, the weather. These things appear very complicated. There are all sorts of scientists dedicated to studying them, writing textbooks about them, debating the importance of different theories.
But the bottom line is, no one really knows how the economy works.
And that is dangerous for two reasons: One, lots of people have successfully convinced politicians that they do, in fact, know how the economy works. And Two, because of this, people/government try to control the economy based on their inaccurate models that don't really work. But this regulation is complicated because that is the only way people know how to explain the economy. The result is things like housing bubbles, debt crises, and inflation.
How about theology?
There are disgustingly long books written about theology. You can devote your entire life to just studying a single religion, and you would never even know what the guy down the street believes. Theology is complicated because it is invented by people to describe things that we don't actually understand. Think about the Romans. They had hundreds of gods, all responsible for little things in daily life, and the result was a ridiculously complicated set of social observances to make sure you didn't offend any deity.
Now, there is nothing wrong with studying complicated things. But I believe that there are far too many people out there who talk like they know more than they do.
As an engineering student, I am surrounded by other students who think they understand how transistors work, but really, no one knows for sure why electrons behave the way they do.
This is one of the coolest things about Jesus. He said simple things. Short sentences. Little stories. Because He actually understood what was going on, so He could put it in simple terms. And christians have been complicating it ever since.
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