A Christian Worldview from Silicon Valley

 1. One of the preachers on your team returns home having been beaten.

2. Someone asks if they can borrow a room in your home to have a Bible study.

3. A village nearby doesn’t have any water and there is a breakout of severe diarrhea among the children.

4. You get word that another village has sold 20 of their children to a couple of men who say they can give the kids a better life.

5. You have a committee meeting to decide on the order of worship.

6. A baby gets dropped off at your doorstep.

7. A small group of ‘rookie’ preachers asks you to help them prepare for an upcoming sermon.

8. You have a lunch appointment to encourage a friend who is having trouble deciding what to do with his business.

9. You hear of a village where the children are going blind for lack of Vitamin A.

10. The church needs new carpet.

Which one will you do first? Why? Seriously…give it a try. I’ll tell you my answer if you tell me yours.

There’s a missionary family coming to visit us this week, Wednesday night.

I’ve been thinking about what kind of welcome they will receive.

Last week while at the World Convention in Nashville I picked up a book (I admit, I read, too) , written by an Indian native preacher. One of his thoughts -

The church “…took up an offering and presented me with a check for what seemed like a great amount of money. Then with their usual hospitality, they invited me to eat with the leaders following the meeting. To my horror, the food and ‘fellowship’ frequently cost more than the money they had just given to missions.”

I wonder…what kind of welcome do we have planned for our missionaries this Wednesday evening?

We are discussing hot topics for the church in one of the Sunday morning classes. Homosexuals in the church, Christian views on sex, masturbation, cohabitation, pre-, extra-, cyber-sex, war, preemptive strikes, pacifism, so far. Yeah, and it gets a bit heated, too. But, not always because of the topic at hand.

I generally begin my class with a list of “Things I think I think.” I didn’t do it last week, but should have. That point is beyond the scope of this post.

Here again are the things I think I think for newcomers to the class and for those who might like to discuss them without taking up class time.

1. There are answers to any and all problems. I believe Jesus is the answer, not mostly the answer. I believe the Bible has answers, not most of them. (more…)

Over the years I’ve often wondered about the “balancing side” of bad things. For instance, what good is a flood? About five years ago, experts in Indiana said that the heavy rains and flooding they got that year had the benefit of temporarily delaying the “onslaught of disease-carrying mosquitoes.” Of course wet weather is a boon for the West NIle carriers, so I’m not sure that’s a fair balance, but we’ll take it.

What about mosquitoes themselves — any redeeming value or balancing benefit? Certainly the birds and bats think so, because they eat them. So do spiders, which is why I’m on friendlier terms with most spiders than a lot of folks might be. (If you don’t like spiders, you have that in common with mosquitoes.)

But there is one balancing benefit to many, many bad things, and that benefit is prayer. I don’t like it when bad things happen in my life or in the lives of those I know and love. I don’t like it when people get sick, when they are in financially difficult times, or when they are experiencing some emotional crisis. But the good side of that is that it causes that person, and more than likely many others as well, to turn to God in prayer.

God doesn’t always grant the requests of the prayers that are spoken in the midst of life’s challenges, I know, but he always likes it when we talk to him.

So don’t wait for something bad to happen, talk to him anyway. Just talk. If the world is going to be out of balance at all, let it be on the good side for a change.

Should homosexuals and gay couples be allowed to be part of the church?

This is the topic we discussed this past Sunday morning.

Here’s a few things I think I think -

1. Homosexuals and gay couples absolutely should be allowed to worship with the Church.

2. Homosexuals can be offered communion.

3. A gay marriage and a Christian marriage are not the same thing.

4. It is up to the leadership of the local church (elders) to determine if a homosexual or partner in a gay couple can serve in a leadership position.

5. Homosexuals and gay couples, like all Christians, should participate in a small group Bible study that requires confession and accountability in their walk with the Lord.

What do you think you think?

I was intrigued by an excerpt from a recent TIME magazine article on former British Prime Minister Tony Blair:

Blair is always careful to downplay the role his faith played in complex matters of life and death, such as the invasion of Iraq. “You don’t put up a hotline to God and get the answers,” he says. At the same time, he plainly thinks his faith has helped him make tough decisions. “The worst thing in politics,” he says, “is when you’re so scared of losing support that you don’t do what you think is the right thing. What faith can do is not tell you what is right but give you the strength to do it.” But in a nation like Britain, where cynicism is a way of life, that distinction—between faith as a guide to action and faith as an aid to decision—is almost bound to be lost.

Frankly, I think that distinction deserves to be lost. In light of our culture’s fondness of political correctness, I will give Blair the benefit of the doubt, but a faith that merely enables you to follow through on what you think is right, seems little more than humanistic.

No wonder religion is so often viewed as a crutch rather than a force to contend with! We restrict God’s influence in our lives by compartmentalizing Him (separation of church and state, anyone?), and yet we know we can’t do it alone, so we’re reduced to asking God to bless our efforts while we limp along as best we can. And we wonder why we don’t see Him?

What’s that Pogo saying? “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Real faith is not getting in God’s way. Let’s see what God can do when we let Him!

As I read Lewis’ blog on putting on the Armor of God, he said something like, “children are given little, if any, say in what they wear.” That reminded me. . .

When my kids were young, a friend told me that one of the hardest things for kids to learn was how to make choices. Everyone faces choices, and in our culture, the choices are myriad. (Another acquaintance from a Soviet bloc country hated shopping in the States because he felt paralyzed with indecision over the selection of dozens of cereals, t-shirts, watches, and so on.) I resolved to train my kids from their earliest moments to make choices. For example, when D was an infant, I’d hold up two outfits and ask her to make a choice. When she appeared to point to an outfit, I would use that outfit and praise her for making a choice.

In life, I think a lot of our choices (from God’s perspective) are similarly inconsequential. Why would he want to control which outfit, job, or road we take, as long as our eyes are fixed on him and our desire is to serve him?

If we sense that God is nudging or calling us in a certain direction, by all means we should go that way. And of course we should continue in prayer about everything.

But when it’s time to make a decision, make one!

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…)

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.

I was playing golf a few weeks ago with a new friend who is a long time Christian and, at 83, a man with no small amount of wisdom. He knew that I was the minister at the Palo Alto Church of Christ, and as we walked down the 9th fairway he asked me a question.

“How are you doing with one of your brother ministers being so much in the news and so controversial?”

I hesitated for a few seconds while my mind tried to interpret the question, and then I got it. He was asking me about Jeremiah Wright and the Trinity United Church of Christ. And why shouldn’t he? Both churches use the name Church of Christ, and to anyone who is not familiar with either of these churches, the names would seem to indicate that they hold many things in common.

My friend, being who he is, knew that the likelihood of our churches being affiliated with one another was remote at best, but his question made me wonder if anyone else might have made that link. Do people in the neighborhood of PACC think that we are part of the same movement that defines Trinity United?

I mostly forgot about that possible link until this past week when I received a phone call at the church. The nice lady on the other end of the line wanted directions to our church from Monterey, because she was coming to a memorial service. I did give her directions but then asked if she was certain the service was going to be at our church. She said she got our number from information, and then she read the notice about the service which said it would be held at The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints on Middlefield Road in Palo Alto.

The names are similar, but the churches are not the same.  How much does the world view us by our name, and what’s in a name?