Trying to follow

I’ve been doing a bit of catching up on my Bible reading and have recently been hanging out in the book of Job. Now, you’ve got to wonder about the book of Job. Most of the time it’s summed up by a preacher in about three chapters (the first two and then the last one), basically they say: Job’s a good guy, devil asks to test him, God let’s him take away everything Job has and even gives him boils, Job doesn’t curse God, and in the end God comes in a violent storm and then returns to Job double what he originally had, the end.
What we barely ever spend much time on is the nearly 40 chapters of conversation between Job and his three ‘counseling’ friends. I could be wrong but I think that is the longest conversation that there is in the Bible, and it’s an definite argument no less. And I’ve been spending the past two days sitting in the midst of these arguing friends, and boy is it something.

I think there are a ton of situations where you could apply some of the wisdom found here, like don’t argue with someone who just lost everything, but I think you can figure those out. Instead, I’d like to just point out one of the interesting passages I ran across that I think might lend us some insight. (This is from The Message, I looked at the NIV too and I think it’s a acceptable translation)

Job to his friends:
“are you going to keep on lying ‘to do God a service’?
to make up stories ‘to get him off the hook’?
Why do you always take his side?
Do you think he needs a lawyer to defend himself?
How would you fare if you were in the dock?
Your lies might convince a jury-but would they convince God?
He’d reprimand you on the spot
if he detected a bias in your witness.
Doesn’t his splendor put you in awe?
Aren’t you afraid to speak cheap lies before him?”

Have you been there? Eagerly trying to ‘defend God’ with your human wisdom? Is that why we are so into apologetics and theological study?

I wonder if our lack of awe at this concept of god we argue the case of, is the very thing that keeps those we argue against from seeing the splendor and standing in awe of the true living God?

In church the other day I was surprised to see two small paintings toward the front of the building depicting Jesus. I recognized them and I believe the appropriate term for them is an “icon.” (I could definitely be wrong on that).

They where obviously painted a few centuries ago. They didn’t look exactly like this but similar. By similar I mean it was the long haired white Jesus we seem to see portrayed everywhere we look. So much so I think we actually think he looked something like that. Now I don’t know much about historical looks and fashions but I’m fairly confident that is NOT what he looked like.

In fact, I just so happened to see that educational show the other day where they went through all kinds of evidence and have come to the conclusion that he looked something like this. I’m really not quite sure if they are right, but at least they gave it a good long consideration.

Now the reason I’m bringing this up is mainly that I think it’s a dangerous and troubling thing that we’ve got all these white Jesus pictures hanging around. The main argument I hear in response when I bring this up is that they are historical, and thus because of their history have value, regardless of how inaccurate they are. I think that is just ridiculous. I also hear people talk about how Jesus becomes like one of us, so a white church can have a white Jesus, a Hispanic church can have a Hispanic Jesus, etc. Now if we are happy and content with our racial divided churches then this might seem slightly feasible, especially if we wanted to promote our racial superiority in our theology (That was extremely sarcastic and I hope you see the terrible flaws in it). I’ll write more at some point about the damage these sorts of imagery cause to children with different skin colors (then the one on the Jesus picture).
For now, I’d just like to say to every person who goes to a church where there are white Jesus’ hanging around, that it’s time you either get a vastly more accurate picture of what Jesus looked like, or you start putting up more depictions of Jesus from other cultures. I guess next Sunday I should bring in this depiction of Jesus.

I probably won’t get to my thoughts about the Biblical foundations about free-will and predestination in this post at all. Rather, I’d like to address one of the dangers that comes up when we start to get honest and talk about this subject. Listen carefully and you might pick up on which direction I lean.

First and foremost, I am NOT a robot. I know you where probably constructing your theories and questioning whether the pictures are real, but seriously I’m not. What I mean by saying this is to address the most common response I hear from people when they are presented with the idea of predestination. IF predestination is true they say, then no choice they make is their own, they are a robot pre-programmed for every action. Therefore, one might say, what is the use of doing anything? I’ll just sit here, cause obviously that’s what God predestined me to do right?
Whether I believe theologically in predestination or not, I am still personally physically and mentally making my own decisions. If I jump, sit, sleep, eat, smile, yell, or laugh, each I have complete control over those choices (whether I’m predestined to do them or not).
I’ll try to present a brief anology, but it will fall short of proving effective unless you do your best to stretch your imagination a little. The whole problem with an anology on this topic is it is an attempt to explain God with human consructs, I find that’s not quite possible. You’ve probably seen one of those magic tricks online where you read a series of things and then say the first word that comes to your mind, “carrot” and low and behold there it is when you scroll down the very word you where thinking of. The reason they knew is because people simply tend to choose that word. But they didn’t FORCE you to choose that word. Now, what if we just always chose that word, that’s just the way people are…would that mean we suddenly lost our free-will? Now multiple that infinity times.

To Be Continued… (In other words, at some point I WILL talk about which I believe [I'm not quite sure yet] and why).

Well, there is plenty of good news to share with you.
1. Best Buy replaced my computer hard drive for free (Service plan)
2. They gave me my old hard drive back (would have cost $90 for them to try and back it up)
3. I’m currently pulling almost ALL of my old files off the old hard drive.
4. I might be able to format the old drive and still use it!

That being said, I hope you didn’t mind my week long vacation from writing. I can’t write quite as well on other computers I’ve realized so I’m here again now, and I’ll get back to our regularly scheduled writings. I hope you’ve been missing reading the posts and listening to the podcast. If not, maybe now would be a good time for me to stop…

By technical difficulties I mean that my computer isn’t turning on at all. Guess that hard drive just got tired of multiple podcast, blog post, and web design projects and just decided to quit. Never fear though, the good ‘ol Best Buy warranty has come to the rescue and I should be back up and running in the next few days or so. I’m typing on my wife’s computer before she needs it for class today. Not having a computer easily available, just for the past day, has reminded me how much I depend on it (with an internet connection) for so many things. Here’s a brief list of things I WOULD have done on the computer, but had to use alternatives for.

• Look up Best Buys phone number (used the yellow pages)
• Get directions to Best Buy (asked and then guessed)
• Check the weather (guessed it was cold)
• See if my library books on hold where in. (didn’t)
• Put a book I just read about on hold (didn’t)
• Checked my most recent bank and loan balances (didn’t)
• looked up mutual funds info (didn’t)
• Paid some bills
• wrote a response to something I read (used a notebook)

That’s just a brief list. Now some of those things I have chosen to be dependent on a computer for (paying my bills), but others it’s much easier to do with a computer (check weather or directions) or not really even possible without (look up mutual funds info).

One might argue we’ve become too dependent on computers, and I’d probably agree. I think we’ve also become to dependent on phones, and cars, and toilets.

Do you think you could one day start living with no modern conviences? (maybe sort of like the Amish…)