Monday, November 30, 2009

Playing with Pictures - Growing in Scripture

the bible,  is this too overexposed?
Good Bible study is far from ho-hum. The power of God's spirit and excitement of God’s word meet in the  rich language of “word pictures” or metaphors placed throughout scripture. And until we take a good look at those pictures, we might miss out on the real message God wants to give us.

A good example of "Word Pictures" and there power is found in Paul’s prayer in chapter 3 of Ephesians, you can spent a whole study exploring the metaphors in the passage. Take verses 16 through 19.

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge — that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:16-19, NIV).

That’s a lot to say in two sentences! But don’t let the density of those sentences get in the way. The word pictures are terrific! There are six of them suggested here: 1.) God’s glorious riches, 2.) Christ dwelling in believers’ hearts, 3.) believers being rooted in love 4.) established in love, 5.) grasping how wide and long and high and deep is Christ’s love, 6.)  being filled with the fullness of God.

As studying word pictures go, one thing I like to do is draw the picture or write out a flowery description of how I see it. Letting the image rest in my mind and flow on to the paper in a new form. I'm no artist yet drawing the word pictures I find opens me to more insights from the Spirit. Take how I visualized God’s “glorious riches.” I visualized a room full of treasure overflowing and sparkling with gold, valuable gems and priceless jewelry, then my mind flashed to a rainbow with a pot of gold at the end. The images built on each other until I had developed a fabulous picture of God’s riches stored up in inexhaustible piles. The pictures connected with me intellectually and emotionally making a transcendent ineffable truth concrete. Biblical imagery will come alive in a powerful way. The method is an avenue to get the word deep in the human heart. The basic steps are simple:
  1. Pray before Reading claiming the promise of the Holy Spirit's ministry of illumination.
  2. Read the passage aloud and listen carefully to discover the word pictures used in it.
  3. Give yourself time to visualize and develop the word pictures. Draw or write your personal take on each picture. [Optional study tool - Some may like to get at a deeper meaning to the writers use of a particular word picture, two good tools are the Key Word Study Bible (similar online tool here) also  Robertson's Word Pictures of the New Testament. I have used both to inspire my imagination when a picture was still just words and to clarify a tricky picture when I wanted to understand the cultural ideas behind the picture]
  4. Read scripture again with the picture in mind. You might even try reading the passage aloud again, this time inserting your picture and flowery description for the word picture.
Such a method can surely be taken to far and pervert a text as much as it can enlighten one. The only caution i would give is to talk with others about your insights. From within a community of believers, the studier gains clarity, accountability and is encouraged to act on the insights they have gained. Truth is like water, it is a life giving substance if left to stagnate it can poison as well as clean. Truth put in action is like a running mountain stream. It is fresh and clean and full of such life that given time it can cut through the hardest rock. 

Ballooning Water Usage


When using this approach, it’s important to take all the pictures seriously, even the ones that seem far-fetched or funny. One time in response to the phrase “that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:19), I visualized a water balloon. After I laughed at my own way of thinking, I gave it real consideration. I began to unfold the image and found that it provided helpful insights. Our lives are as limp and shapeless as empty balloons if we don’t have God’s Spirit filling us. When God begins to pour his nature into us, we will be surprised how we can be stretched far beyond the capacities we thought we had. And we will feel ourselves “fit to burst” with a sense of joy and fulfillment when we find that God is beginning to give us his own character and to include us as partners in his own purposes.

Though visualizing scriptural word pictures may seemed like playing and not study. The approach produces serious benefits for the believer. It jarred us out of our traditional ruts of interpretation, forces us to avoid pious platitudes and allows us to hear God speaking afresh.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

The Comming Sexual Norms that is no norm at all

How far have we gone from the idea of faithfulness in relationships? How about the place where monogomy is considerd a danger to human rights. Today, there is a small ground swell of acceptance for polyamorist relationships. In the below video Diana Adams is a committed polyamorist, a Brooklyn lawyer and a sexual civil rights activist. In this pod, Diana's real life is put on display. She juggle her multiple committed polyamorous relationships, go with her to court where she defends the rights of alternative families and see how she is defining new sexual norms.



Diana is not an uneducated weirdo but she is in the middle of this move to a new definition for human relationships.You may say that this is margal, the outer limates of our culture, and I would agree. While today most people are morally against such behavior. It may not stay that way. Given the entrenchment of scientific materialism as our cultural worldview monogamy could one day become a vice. Richard Dawkins has an article in Newsweek that challenges the ethics of monogamy as oppressive. As the good doctor states:
“I want to raise another question that interests me. Why are we so obsessed with monogamous fidelity in the first place?... The underlying presumption -- that a human being has some kind of property rights over another human being's body -- is unspoken because it is assumed to be obvious. But with what justification?”
Even sticking to the higher plane of love, is it so very obvious that you can't love more than one person? We seem to manage it with parental love (parents are reproached if they don't at least pretend to love all their children equally), love of books, of food, of wine (love of Chateau Margaux does not preclude love of a fine Hock, and we don't feel unfaithful to the red when we dally with the white), love of composers, poets, holiday beaches, friends . . . why is erotic love the one exception that everybody instantly acknowledges without even thinking about it? Why can a woman not love two men at the same time, in their different ways? And why should the two – or their wives -- begrudge her this?”
Dawkins holds sexual jealousy not infidelity as the vice. From his evolutionary worldview he has a solid definable position, that is if you assume his presupposition of Darwinism. Sadly most of the western world unconsciously holds such view making His arguments feasible. Just ask the average teen what does it mean to be human? If we are animals general mammal behavior informs our behavior. Further, human evolution has brought us to a pragmatic understanding of sexual rights along those general mammal lines.
Pride 2578 I am reminded of a line from the song, The Bad Touch by Bloodhound Gang, "You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals So let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel." Now, the song is very crude but accurate on a philosophical level. If we are animal with no higher moral law directing out behavor an ethic of monogamy is little more than power games to control others. In Dawkins' moral frame any person motivated by sexual jelously that clams some idea of ownership over another person is a real evil. Dawkins is not alone in his thought. Modern psychology clams monogamy does not work (The Monogamy Hoax in Psychology Today,[1] )   The best we can do is to make it long enought to give a "baby a reasonable chance for survival," writes Dr Stephen B. Mason. He concludes:
So there you have it. For tens of thousands of years, human beings fell in love, made a baby, fell out of love and then did it again with a new partner. Just because somebody decided to change the rules a few hundred years ago - a mere blink of the eye in terms of evolution - makes no difference. Unless we can practice the serial monogamy of super stars and celebrities, we are genetically engineered to face lifelong monogamy as a form of incest. I know this will come as a surprise to most of you and a challenge to many of you. The idea that One-Man-One-Woman-Fifty-Years isn't normal flies in the face of all you've been taught and all the Dr. Phils and the Dr. Lauras espouse. And yet, can you come up with a better scenario to fit the facts?

Look At It This Way
There are many people you love with whom you wouldn't want to have sex and vice versa...people with whom you'd enjoy a one night stand but may not even like all that much. In effect, conventional marriage may justifiably be equated with either eventual infidelity or an inevitable denial of the sex drive. The romantic notion that the two - love and sex - must always go together and that the ‘till death do us part model should be taken as the gold standard of relationships is just that - a romantic notion
Now I am not a fan of the overly romantic notion of marriage but claming all romance is a chemical induced sham. Would he have me chunk my John Cusack collection and burn my copy of 'Say Anything'? All I can say to that is "heresy"! I often wonder how such people get PHDs then I remember, I am the one who is backwards. All because I will not accept evolution as a worldview presupposition instead of a valid but debated scientific theory, silly-me!? [*sigh* & *sarcasm*].

I should have known where Dr Mason was going when I read his open question; "Divorce is such an emotionally devastating, financially ruinous event that it might be wise to take a close look at its root cause - marriage. Is it possible that monogamy is abnormal?" His answer, abnormal as Helen Keller doing stand up comedy. 

If we are only mamals the biology dictates behavior and monogamy is restics to our mammal nature to spread DNA far and wide. Then monongomy is morally wrong and an alternative needs to be erected (no pun intend). Guided by the evolutionary worldview the logical conclusion for all involved in to deconstruct relationships to a polyamorous level. In time marriage becomes culturally obsolesce. Not saying people will not get married but I am saying that more and more people will not define relasionships by the old sexual norms [2].I am going beyond the homosexual debate and into a temporary and formless view of all relationships much like that of some mammal species.

You may think, "Dawson your have lost it! your talking like a mad man? How can that be? Why would people even entertain such an argument?" Because as a culture how we view the world guides our behavior in it. The body of knowledge we draw from to answer the meaningful questions about ourselves and our world will guide what we view as legitimate and possible for human behavior.

Today, we are at a turning point in human history (Not 2012) scientific evolution has been taught from a worldview frame for over 30 years now. It holds sway in with both the general zeitgeist and the public courts.[3] Most courts give strong credence to the scientific body of knowledge. And although our post modern mood dismisses the totality of the scientific worldview people will still give authority to a scientist or researcher who clams "such and such" study concluded people need to "bla bla bla". We need no worry with polygamy, polyamorous relationships is the coming danger.  For now, we need not tarry but seek to formulate good contextually and logically sound arguments against polyamorous relationship.

So I encourage you to wake up. Be alert, I do not joke! It will be here sooner than you think. When the church has been lulled to sleep by 'Nova specials' and water collier talk; when in our sleep we define humanity as a rational, self-conscious, naked ape though our waking lips lie to us; when our kids redefine what a 'sleep over' is, to match the practices of a 'sleep over' -- it will be to late. As that day dawns, our grand kids and their grand kids will find it hard to understand what it means to be monogamous. I sympathize with the words of another Madman:


"I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars---and yet they have done it themselves."
   
End-notes
[1] The article is a good example of 'evolutionary psychology'. A perspective that is quickly becoming the consistence view in psychology due to its ability to 1.) give a comprehensive worldview, and 2.) make peace between the waring camps of philosophical psycology and experimental psycology.

[2] The arguments used by chrisatin ethicsist caming same sex marriage will ead to beasteality is not the best argment. That is only for shock value. the best argument is the ifpolyamorous relationships become accepted then the concept of relationships no longer exist. You cant have a country without borders you can have relationships without social category that are more than subjective. Think of the IRS issues?

[3] The argument for modern idea of fundamental right (a modern conception of human rights outside those expressed in the bill of right but clammed to be function under the 14th amendment). fundamental rights were under pinned by the ideaology of political evolution. States' rights and autonomy can be bypassed in the name of defending the fundimental rights of the indivifual citizen. We know it as the idea of big government, where the right of the state to government itself is subject to control by the national government.    



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Thursday, November 12, 2009

What are the arguments for amillennialism? Part 1 and 2

From my boys over at Reclaiming the Mind Ministries. Here is there arguments for amillennialism. Sigma phi Boyz!



Part 2

R.C. Sproul And Amillennialism12:The Millennium

R.C. Sproul And Amillennialism 9: The AntiChrist

R.C. Sproul and Amillennialism 3: A Question of Time

R.C. Sproul And Amillennialism 2: Understanding The Parousia

R.C. Sproul and Amillennialism: A Crisis In Eschatology

Part of a series where R.C. Sproul discusses his amillennial eschatological views. More useful for its challenges to other systems, premillennial dispensationalism and the pretribulation secret rapture in particular, than a justification for amillennialism itself.









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