I’ve heard numbers, but I’d never seen a list. This one is the most complete, but this one lists the age and occupation. Either one is worthy of some sober minutes of reflection.
A New Calendar
Some people have commented that they are disappointed that this year’s calendar from Messianic Jewish Publications has artwork instead of photos from me. Actually there are three calendars this year of which my pictures are a part, but come January we’ll be looking at a blank wall (well, there is possibly one exception). But I have grown to like having a calendar which has the Jewish holidays; I don’t need the American ones so much as they are ingrained in my memory from childhood.
With publishers like lulu.com which print calendars that you design, it occurred to me that there might be someone who’d want to put something together for any readers of this blog (or other fans of beautiful scenes of Israel). In addition to choosing 12 photos, there’d be some work in creating the calendar with the right holidays and such. There are a lot of ways a calendar could go: it could just be beautiful scenes of Israel, or it could focus on the Galilee area, or biblical sites from the patriarchs, etc. I even have a good photo of a turtle that could fit in any kind of calendar!
If this is something you want to do, send me an email directly. In case more than one responds, you might want to tell me why you’d do the best job :-). If anyone else has other info, like advice to avoid a certain publisher or to suggest a better alternative, I’ll take that as well.
Calendar from 2004-2005
Just Say Yes
I may not be famous, but I went to high school with two people who are in the news today.
Marion Jones ‘B’ sample came back negative and Dmitri Young was released from the Detroit Tigers. Both have had problems allegedly with substance abuse and both make a teeny bit more than I do (Young gets $8mil for the year; Jones makes more than $25mil in endorsements).
So here’s what I learned from high school: I should have done drugs.
God's Love Letter to You?
I was recently asked about a statement I made previously:
The Bible was not written for you or me. Thus, I don’t feel bad if some part of it is boring or doesn’t “speak to me.”
So I was asked, isn’t the Bible God’s love letter to us? Uh, no. Not exactly.
It’s easier to speak in specifics rather than in general terms, so let’s take the book of Samuel as our example. The book of Samuel had an author (or authors) and it had an audience. That is, the person(s) who wrote Samuel wrote it for a reason and for a certain readership. And it wasn’t me (or you). This sounds basic, but it is increasingly important in a world (and church) that doesn’t seem to appreciate context and recognize boundaries. While the book of Samuel may be difficult to nail down exactly who wrote it, when they wrote, and exactly to whom they wrote, I think we can all agree that the audience was a group of Jewish people sometime between 1000-500 B.C. We don’t need to be more specific for our purposes now. So the point is that the original audience cannot be me (I’m not Jewish) and it can’t be you (unless you’re 2500 years old).
But, you ask, isn’t there a way in which Samuel is for us. Yes, indeed. But that way is not to pretend as if that book was written to and for us. Instead, it is to understand the meaning of Samuel as intended by its original author(s) to its original hearers/readers. That, and only that, meaning is what you must seek. You cannot start with “what is Samuel saying to me?” Once you’ve determined what Samuel is saying to its audience, then you can determine what application it has for your life.
So here’s an example. You read the story of David and Goliath (chapter 17). First, determine what it meant when it was written. I’ll save you some time: the answer is that it was written to show David’s military superiority to Saul (not Goliath, Saul), which of course reflects God’s hand upon David. Once you understand the original meaning (and there’s no magic except for careful attention to the context and some knowledge of history, geography, and language), then you can determine how it applies to you today. Valid principles include:
1. God empowers those whom he chooses to do what he wills.
2. God expects his people to embrace the leader he has chosen for them.
3. God can defend his honor in unexpected ways.
These of course lead to proper application:
1. If you are doing the will of God, he will give you the strength you need.
2. Honor those in authority over you.
3. Don’t try to outsmart God.
The problem with the “love letter to me” approach is that you end up making the Bible say things that it does not intend to say. For instance, you can say that God will always allow you to conquer the giants in your life. You can say that God’s servants need to be prepared with extra stones in their pouch. You can say that those who denounce God should have their heads cut off. The problem with all of these applications is that they are not what the writer intended to say (and by the way, I’m not making a significant distinction between the event itself and the recording of that event, but there is a difference and thus it’s easiest and best to speak about the written record). And I think they are all false. Let me say it more strongly: all applications which do not derive from the passage are dangerous! They must be forgotten or denounced, as the case may be. If the statement is true and you know so from another passage, then base it on the other passage and not this one.
If the question is “can I profit from all of the Bible even though it was not written directly to me?”, the answer is a resounding yes. Paul knew that Samuel wasn’t written to him but yet he told Timothy that all Scripture was useful. The key here is in using it as it was originally intended and not as a horoscope.
So, to Leviticus, which sort of prompted my original statement above. Leviticus wasn’t written for me, to me, and it has very little relevance for me today. I didn’t say that it has none, but I will say that the bulk of the commands given in that book are not relevant for God’s people today. There are things you can learn from Leviticus, such as just how high the cost is for sin. Those are glorious truths which I don’t want to do away with. But I’m not sure that it’s necessary for me to savor every last little detail about the various shades of color of swelling on a person who has a rash. If you lived in the covenant community of Israel and you had a rash, those details were life for you. Today, however, they are boring.
An Epitaph
Spotted yesterday: this gravestone marker for the wife of James De Rothschild, son of Baron Edmond De Rothschild. Any ladies out there want to put this on their tombstone?
A close-up:
Five Years
Five years ago today was a very happy day for my family. It had been a difficult labor for Kelli and we were unhappy with the substitute doctor called in to deliver holiday weekend babies. But when the moment came, the birth was beautiful and amazing, unlike with our previous two sons. That was early in the morning and we had the rest of the day to enjoy our son. Of course, we didn’t know that it was a special day. Timothy lived for 35 days, but it was only his first day that we could hold him without a variety of tubes connected to him.
There are of course a lot of difficult thoughts and emotions in a time like that, but one that I kept thinking of was what his life would have been like. His four siblings are all different and no doubt he too would have had a unique mix of personality traits. What would he have looked like? More like his mom or dad? What would have been his favorite things to do? How would he have related to his older brothers and younger sisters? Questions like these are quite normal I think for anyone who loses someone young in age. But they come again to mind today, when we would have celebrated Timothy’s fifth birthday.
We do not doubt God, who sometimes gives 80 years and sometimes gives 35 days. “When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (Psalm 139:15-16).
Luke (8), Mark (6), Bethany (4), Katie (2)
Stupid Security
Do we really gain something by patting down a two-year-old? Are we somehow safer? Are we morally superior because we equally pat down the 25-year-old Muslim male and the 2-year-old girl? Is the goal security or is it to demonstrate that we are “fair to all”? I think that if we’re going to win the “war on terror” we have to define who the enemy is. Hint: it’s not my two-year-old daughter. Another hint: Almost all acts of terror in the last 3 decades have been perpetuated by Muslim men, aged 18-35. I believe that it is inconvenient for many innocent Muslims to face heightened security, but I don’t think it lessens their inconvenience to pat my two-year-old down. Muslim men may not like this “profiling,” but they should understand it. If not, they are stupid. As it is, we can claim that title.
Said more eloquently:
Wall Street Journal editorial (Aug 19):
A return to any kind of normalcy in travel is going to require that airport security do a better job of separating high-risk passengers from unlikely threats. However, the fact that we may have come within a whisker of losing 3,000 lives over the Atlantic still isn’t preventing political correctness from getting in the way of smarter security.
Daniel Pipes (Aug 22)
Noting the limited impact that losing 3,000 lives had in 2001 and building on my “education by murder” hypothesis — that people wake up to the problem of radical Islam only when blood is flowing in the streets — I predict that effective profiling will only come into effect when many more Western lives, say 100,000, have been lost.
Surfing in Class
Yesterday‘s attempt to write something short that was both humorous and possibly truthful touched a nerve, as evidenced by some comments both here and sent to me directly. So today I’m going to follow it up with a more serious post.
Some would say that whether you surf in class or not is a personal decision. If the student chooses to waste his time and money, no cranky blog poster like myself should stop him. And, of course, in the real world like work and grad studies, you make your own decisions without someone telling you what to do.
The issue for me is simply this: stewardship. And my observation is that college students are in the process of learning just that. Most college students enter their freshman year without much concept of making the most of their educational opportunities. Their goal is to get the grade, and if they do that, they’ve succeeded. So surf away, if the current lesson won’t be on the test. By the time they graduate, college students usually have matured in this area. Grad students in particular seem to better understand the value of their education.
Can you surf and lesson to a lecture at the same time? Of those that can, my guess is that 90% will not be fully engaged in the lecture. Maybe those with a mind like Spurgeon can handle it; I don’t have many Spurgeons in my classes. Surfing (or IM’ing or whatever the distraction might be) thus keeps the student from gaining the full value of the class. Ah, but what about the classes with loser teachers, who aren’t saying anything of value anyway? Yes, I’ve had those teachers. In this case, the issues are respecting the teacher (worthy or not) and distracting others. Therefore, close the browser. There are ways of redeeming the time without showing disrespect or distracting others.
One approach to this problem for teachers is simply to ban all computers in class or to require the students to sit in the front row where they can be monitored. My preference is simply to tell students not to use their computers for non-class activities when I am teaching. That’s an honor system, but I think it works. Students who see others violating this should, following biblical principles, confront them on this. In this way, I’m doing more than controlling behavior by legislation but am preparing them for real life. In addition, I think that in certain types of classes (mine included) most students should be using their computers to take notes, so banning them or restricting to a certain part of the room would not work.
Another way that teachers can work to reduce this problem is by using teaching and testing methods that require the student’s attention. In other words, don’t be boring, don’t be basic, and don’t be easy.
Welcome Back
I just thought I’d say a big “welcome back” to my readers who only read this blog when class is in session. If you’re guilty, just go ahead…click that red little X at the top right corner of this screen, vow never again to read blogs or to IM during class and instead make use of that $38 you’re paying for each class hour!
Goodbye! :-)
For the other two readers of this blog, I’ve been camping and don’t have time to do a real post today. Sorry.
Lesson Learned?
There are various opinions on whether Israel, Lebanon, or Hezbollah won the war, but surely this statement yesterday by Sheik Hassan Nasrallah should be factored in:
He said Hezbollah had not expected even “1 percent” of Israel’s response to its July 12 cross-border raid, which provoked the conflict. “If I had known that the operation to capture the soldiers would lead to this result, we would not have carried it out,” Reuters quoted him as saying.
I’m thankful that the two Fox News reporters were freed. Keep praying for the three Israeli soldiers still held hostage: Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser, and Eldad Regev.