A Christian Worldview from Silicon Valley

When we are small we have little, if any, say on what we wear. As we grow we begin to make our own choices, and sometimes we choose poorly. Or at least it seems we do, based on what we hear from our parents.

“It’s raining, put on your boots.”

“It’s cold, put on your coat.”

“Put on a clean shirt before you go out.”

“Young lady, you are not going out looking like that!”

In every one of those cases (as I imagine them) the parent is trying to protect the child. Clothes can offer protection from inclement weather, protection from criticism, and they can even offer protection from unwanted sexual advances.

The problem is, we don’t always want the protection. Little boys run out into the rain without their boots because it’s more fun to splash in the puddles barefoot. And sometimes young women, who may not understand what they are inviting, dress to be noticed and desired.

I wonder if we fail to “put on the whole armor of God” for similar reasons. We don’t think we’ll catch a cold for a lack of boots or find ourselves in a dangerous situation because we dressed seductively, so we go for the short term pleasure at the risk of longer term pain. And we don’t think Satan will really bother us much if we sometimes leave the belt of truth at home, or “forget” to lug along that heavy shield of faith. Sometimes we don’t even want to carry the sword, which is the word of God. After all, we rarely use it even when we do have it with us.

Perhaps we need God standing at the door, reminding us to dress well, and not letting us go out until we are properly attired.

Polishing my armor….

In 1983 Harold Washington became the first black mayor of Chicago. I happened to live in a Chicago suburb at the time, and it was big news everywhere around “that toddlin’ town.” My next door neighbor, Steve, was a life-long Chicago-area resident with lots of family scattered around that unique northeast corner of Illinois, including a cousin who was a Chicago city cop.

Steve told me that his cousin was in a gang task force that, just a few nights before Washington was to take office, corralled a group of young black men who appeared to these professional officers to be a gang. The police had the suspects up against a wall and were searching them for guns and contraband when one of them suddenly turned around and faced the officers.

There was a moment of tension, but it turned into laughter when the young man spoke. “When Harold becomes Mayor,” he said, “this ****’s gonna stop!”

I think that fits WCB’s picture of expecting that things are going to be a certain way (e.g. “my way”) if a certain event occurs or if a certain position is obtained.

It could be that most of us have, somewhere along the line, practiced that kind of thinking, and it is only natural to imagine what you might do if you were in a position of leadership or in a role of authority. What is slightly more dangerous, or at least has more potential for danger, is seeking a position for the power that comes with it so that you can fulfill some kind of personal agenda.

But when it comes to the selection of elders for a church body, there is a bright side to all this that gives me peace, and it is that we are not in this alone.

Aside from all the other help we get, God is in it, and he is the one who makes the ultimate selection of elders. I’ve seen him use all kinds of tools and methods along the way to weed out those he doesn’t want in the job at a particular time and place, and I’ve seen him use various tools and methods to get those in whom he does want. I’ve seen men try to get in for selfish reasons, but I’ve only ever seen one succeed. Within a month he was done with the role, eldership not being the platform he envisioned.

It also gives me peace to know that personal agendas are very difficult to promote within an eldership. Yes, it can be done, but it is very, very rare. There is just no room for it.

And finally, it gives me peace to know the power of prayer. May we all be using that power as we prepare for our elder selection process!

I’ve been asked by a friend to help him staff his company. That is, he wants me to do the leg work, read the material, figure out the law, post the announcements, screen, interview, stay out of trouble and find him someone who will work long, hard and for as little reimbursement as possible.

I admit, I get confused. Am I trying to find him a worker-bee or am I sitting in on the “make-us-a-plan-to-find-elders committee” at PACC?

Here’s what scares me – I have heard “When I get the job, then I will do this, that and the other. I just need the position.” (more…)

I’ve been thinking for many years about the idea of freedom, and I’m certain that there are nooks and crannies I have yet to discover, as well as many rooms into which I’ve only glanced.

One of those rooms is human slavery, a condition in which one person becomes the legal property of another and is forced to obey that person. On my own I can only explore this room intellectually, having never been a slave or a slave owner. I can explore it emotionally with the help of those who have known slaves or been slaves, and one who has helped me do a little of that is the poet Elma Stuckey, mother of my friend Sterling Stuckey. Her work in The Collected Poems of Elma Stuckey has touched me and taught me.

But there is one room at the intersection of freedom and slavery that I do know something of, and that is the spiritual room. The apostle Paul knew about it too, and what a person to write about it! He was, of all men, most “free.” He was an Israelite, a Pharisee, highly educated by the best of Rabbis, and he was also a Roman citizen. In his culture, in his time, no one could be his master.

Except that he made himself a slave to Christ, because he realized that otherwise he was a slave to sin.

There is amazing freedom in being a slave to Christ, and it is a condition I highly recommend. Most of us don’t, of course, think of our relationship to Jesus Christ in that way. We think of him as our brother, our savior, our friend. We sometimes even say that he is our Lord or our Master, but that doesn’t mean we are his slaves.

Or does it?

I was fairly young when I first heard someone say, “The only way to be free is to be a slave.” The person saying this was someone I trusted, but I didn’t understand what he meant. Let me correct that — I understood all the words, but I didn’t understand how his statement could be applied in my life, or in anyone else’s life, for that matter.

The idea that to be free you must be a slave is what is known as a paradox. My first encounter with that word was in the old joke, “What do you get when you put Dr. Harrell and Dr. Brickman together?” The answer, of course, is “a pair o’ docs.” Eventually I grasped the real definition of paradox as a seemingly self-contradictory statement that when understood proves to be true.

Being a slave to be free certainly fits that. I had read Huckleberry Finn, and I knew that Jim was running away from slavery because slavery was bad. I also knew that Jim eventually got caught by a “slave catcher,” and that Uncle Silas (who would be Jim’s master) was the embodiment of evil. So why would I want to be a slave, and how could that make me free?

Paul writes about this in several of his letters, including a passage in Ephesians we examined in part last Sunday. I’ll come back to this topic, but for now let the paradox of being made free by becoming a slave roll around in your mind and in your heart.

Keith Mitchell gets the credit and a whole lot of it for this post. He sent it out as an email but I thought it was worth sharing with a much bigger audience. Great thoughts, Keith.

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I’m not really convinced that there is a need for an ID movement. You either get it or you don’t.

Most every Law of Physics breaks down at some level. Electromagnetic Theory breaks down at the quantum level. Solid state physic try to explain Superconductivity. These breakdowns keep us employed. We have very little understanding of how Gravity and space-time work. Einstein and many others have been trying to unify Gravity and Electromagnetism for years. Going back to the Big Bang and trying to work our way back has yielded huge gains in understanding, but much is just beyond our eyes, ears, and touch.

(more…)

IMHO, there are a lot of people wandering about and wondering about what is God’s will.

I’m not one of them. My problem isn’t knowing God’s will, it’s doing what I know to be His will.

I was reading in Exodus this morning and then took my thoughts for a walk, always a dangerous combination, depending on whether I am in the mood to follow God or fight Him.

Exodus 5. Moses was haggling with Pharaoh. The result was things got really hard for the Israelites. Then they got really really hard. I think it rhymes with Pharaoh’s heart got really hard, then really really hard.

(more…)

After watching the movie Expelled and learning a little bit about what Intelligent Design is, I’ve run across another idea that seems to reinforce the need for teaching the Intelligent Design perspective. There is a new study called biomimicry, where nature’s designs are studied and the design ideas are used to form new solutions for humanity.

All sorts of things can be reverse engineered from studying the designs found in nature. Seems to me that these people are not at all shy about saying that nature is full of complex designs worthy of study. The question remains as to what is causing these designs. Natural selections, or God? Deists think God causes the natural selections. Atheists think that natural selections caused humans to invent God. Most Christians fall somewhere between Deists and a young earth 7 24 hour day creation event. From a science perspective, does it matter?

It seems to me this study of nature and the designs that are found is a powerful tool and can actually open up new lines of investigation. I didn’t find this point made in Expelled, though I may have dozed off during it. I didn’t hear a practical reason for teaching this perspective. For example — and this is just a poor example — we used to think the appendix and tonsils were useless randomly leftover parts (“vestigial organs”), but today, after a little study, we know they do have some purpose. The closer we look, the more designed things appear to be, and that is exciting to think about as a Scientist. Don’t take nature for granted. Look for the designs and ask questions. What could be better?

Whether you say that natural selection is smarter than we are at designing, or attribute it to God, it should be of interest to study things from the design perspective. Taking it all for granted and saying nothing to look at here, move on, seems medieval.