Tag Archive - Reading

The Day Metallica Came to Church

December 3, 2010 in Reading with 2 Comments

The Day Metallica Came to ChurchI just finished John Van Sloten’s book, The Day Metallica Came to Church: Searching for the Everywhere God in Everything. I wasn’t sure if it would be a gimmicky book or not, but it turned out to be well worth it. His concept of “co-illumination” was worth the book itself and has found a nice home in my vocabulary. This term has fascinated me as I’ve processed it and I love the way it allows your mind to expect God to come alive and jump from the Bible to the present day.

In fact, the book served as a nice part two to Brett McCracken’s book, Hipster Christianity, that I read and reviewed a few months ago. It seems that these ideas are either an emerging trend in the church, or it is something that God is trying to teach me right now.

Here are some of my favorite ideas from it:

Continue Reading…

Divine Conspiracy – Ch.7

November 29, 2010 in Bible, Reading with 4 Comments

I’m going to focus my highlights from chapter 7 of Divine Conspiracy into one specific topic addressed. My favorite part of this chapter was Willard’s explanation of Matthew 7:6 which is a very confusing verse. It says, “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces.” I’ve heard various explanations of this that have never really clicked for me. But here is how he put it:

“The problem with pearls for pigs is not that the pigs are not worthy. It is not worthiness that is in question here at all, but helpfulness. Pigs cannot digest pearls, cannot nourish themselves upon them. Likewise for a dog with a Bible or a crucifix. The dog cannot eat it. The reason these animals will finally ‘turn and rend you,’ when you one day step up to them with another load of Bibles or pearls, is that you at least are edible. Anyone who has ever had serious responsibilities of caring for animals will understand immediately what Jesus is saying.”

This makes perfect sense and is an incredible way to think of this passage. How often do we give someone something in the “name of God” that they cannot use? I think of people who leave a tract or verse reference at a restaurant instead of a tip because “they need that more than money.” The reality is, that server is trying to earn a living and take care of his/her family and they are unlikely to be impressed with your God if it means you won’t provide for them the way any other “normal” person would. Here’s my suggestion if you are prone to wanting to do this: how about you leave a lavish tip to go with the Bible tract? That will shock them for sure. Willard goes on to explain:

“Frankly, our ‘pearls’ often are offered with a certain superiority of bearing that keeps us from paying attention to those we are trying to help. We have solutions. That should be enough, shouldn’t it? And very quickly some contempt, impatience, anger, and even condemnation slips into our offer.”

Divine Conspiracy – Ch.6

November 17, 2010 in Jesus, Reading with 1 Comment

Here are my favorite ideas from chapter 6 of Dallas Willard’s Divine Conspiracy. He discussed fasting in this chapter and I really liked his perspective on it. It will be helpful for our church wide fast next Wednesday!

“There is nothing inherently wrong with being known. Just as in the case of ‘adultery of the heart,’ the issue here is one of intents and purposes. Not did we look at someone and sexually desire them, as we have seen, but did we look at someone in order to sexually desire them. And now: not are we seen doing a good deed, but are we doing a good deed in order to be seen. In any case where we use, on ourselves or others, promised recognition as a motive for doing what should be done for its own sake, we are preempting God’s role in our life.”

“But Jesus himself knew that when we have learned how to fast ‘in secret,’ our bodies and our souls will be directly sustained by the invisible kingdom. We will not be miserable. But we certainly will be different. And our abundant strength and our joy will come in ways a purely physical human existence in ‘the flesh’ does not know. It will come from those sources that ‘are in secret.’”

“The decisive motivation for acting as well as not acting must be our regard of the kingdom of God in which we live as Jesus’ people.”

“The practice of fasting goes together with this teaching about nourishing ourselves on the person of Jesus. It emphasizes the direct availability of God to nourish, sustain, and renew the soul. It is a testimony to the reality of another world from which Jesus and his Father perpetually intermingle their lives with ours (John 14:23). And the effects of our turning strongly to this true ‘food’ will be obvious.”

Divine Conspiracy – Ch.5

November 7, 2010 in Bible, Jesus, Reading with 0 Comments

I’m actually reading through chapter 7 of Divine Conspiracy at the moment, but I realized that I’m a few chapters behind in what I’ve posted here. Chapter 5 is the chapter that I have disagreed with the most up to this point. Let me give you two examples of things where Dallas and I part ways:

“The law of God marks the movements of God’s kingdom, of his own actions and of how that kingdom works. When we keep the law, we step into his ways and drink in his power. Jesus shows us those ways even more fully and leads us into them.” (underline mine)

“A time will come in human history when human beings will follow the Ten Commandments and so on as regularly as they now fall to the ground when they step off a roof. They will then be more astonished that someone would lie or steal or covet than they now are when someone will not.”

It seems that Dallas is arguing that the fulfillment of the Kingdom means the fulfillment of the laws on our part. I’m not sure if that is the point he is trying to make, but a few passages like the one above leave me feeling so. Christ has fulfilled the law and we are now under a new covenant as we build the Kingdom. We do not need to feel the weight of the law as Christians but instead the grace of Christ. I’m reminded of what I read recently from our Route 66 Bible Reading plan in Hebrews. “By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear.” (Heb. 8:13).

Here are some other things in the chapter that I did like:

“The various scenes and situations that Jesus discusses in his Discourse on the Hill are actually stages in a progression toward a life of agape love.”

“The deeper question always concerns who you are, not what you did do or can do. What would you do if you could?”

“When the heart is ready, the action will occur as occasion offers. Just as the thief is the person who would steal if circumstances were right, so the adulterer is the one who would have wrongful sex if the circumstances were right.”

Divine Conspiracy – Ch.4

October 3, 2010 in Bible, Jesus, Reading with 2 Comments

The Sermon of the Beatitudes (1886-96) by James Tissot from the series The Life of Christ, Brooklyn MuseumI’m continuing in Dallas Willard’s book, The Divine Conspiracy, and chapter four is quite interesting. Willard tackles the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12 and Luke 6:17-26)  in an a way that I have never heard or thought of before. I’ve always thought of them as a kind of list of instructions on how to live in the Kingdom of God. Willard argues a completely different point.

While I haven’t had time to soak on his take yet, there is something about his thoughts that are ringing true. Whenever my understanding of a Biblical concept is challenged like this, I am always a bit unnerved, and excited. Read the passages above from Matthew and Luke as a refresher (or for the first time) and then consider Willard’s thoughts below.

“The Beatitudes simply cannot be ‘good news’ if they are understood as a set of ‘how-tos’ for achieving blessedness. They would then only amount to a new legalism.”

“They single out cases that provide proof that, in him, the rule of God from the heavens truly is available in life circumstances that are beyond all human hope.”

“They serve to clarify Jesus’ fundamental message: the free availability of God’s rule and righteousness to all of humanity through reliance upon Jesus himself, the person now loose in the world among us. They do this simply by taking those who, from the human point of view, are regarded as most hopeless, most beyond all possibility of God’s blessing or even interest, and exhibiting them as enjoying God’s touch and abundant provision from the heavens. This fact of God’s care and provision proves to all that no human condition excludes blessedness, that God may come to any person with his care and deliverance.”

“Thus by proclaiming blessed those who in the human order are thought hopeless, and by pronouncing woes over those human beings regarded as well off, Jesus opens the kingdom of the heavens to everyone.”

“But the Beatitudes is not even a list of spiritual giants. Often you will discern a peculiar nobility and glory on and among these ‘blessed’ ones. But it is not from them. It is the effulgence of the kingdom among them.”

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