Dr. Jim West has challenged all bibliobloggers to post a picture of their desktop. I am constantly changing my background, so I thought I would give you two shots. I’m a big fan of high-def backgrounds like this one:
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I was hanging out with some good friends of mine tonight, and we got into a discussion of wealth and Christian liberty. Sojourn just finished up a sermon series on Christian liberty from Romans 13 as part of our year long Romans series. Our discussion centered around liberty and wealth. In terms of wealth, American Christianity looks far different than what it seems that Jesus was teaching his disciples. How much of this is cultural and how much of this is outright sin? Is any of it sin? Or is driving a BMW a sign of God’s blessing?
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Michael McKinnley has written an excellent post at the Church Matters blog, entitled “Why Obama Might Not be the Antichrist.” He gets to the root of several problems of theology today- America-centrism. He writes:

“Monsters like Hitler, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, and Josef Stalin have all risen and fallen and have not been the harbinger of the end times. But this guy wants to socialize our health care, and Jesus is supposed to be so enraged that he will come storming back to save us?”

In an attempt to not actually do homework, I thought I’d throw out a pattern and see who can guess what it is. Have fun:

1
11
21
1211
111221
312211
13112221
1113213211
31131211131221
1321133113112211
11131221232113212221
…

No searching allowed. If you’re already familiar with the sequence, say so in the comment. Since they are moderated by me, I can hold your comment until others have a chance to figure out the pattern.

On my last blog, I did a short study on Mark’s view of Christ according to his prologue. Soon, I hope to incorporate that article on this blog and maybe take it a little more in-depth, but when I translated Mark 1:3 I strayed from the traditional rendering. In this entry, I am going to look at why I did so.
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I’ve been tagged by Jeff with the 123 Book Meme.

The rules state that I must pick up the book closest to me and:

1. turn to page 123
2. count the first five sentences
3. post the following three sentences

Here is Christopher J. H. Wright’s “Knowing Jesus through the Old Testament”.

“In the texts above, for example, they are ‘rebellious sons’, ‘faithless sons’, or ‘lying sons’. This second aspect of Israel’s sonship thus clearly corresponds to the other side of the covenant relationship, namely the imperative demand for obedience- a demand which applied to all individual members of the nation.

So what we find then, is that both poles of the covenant (God’s initiative and Israel’s obedience) are held together within the same relational metaphor of father and son.

Consider yourself tagged!

The Church I attend, Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, Ky, states that it is “in the city, for the city.” Recently, some pastors discussed what it means to be “for the city.” You can check out how they answered in the video below. Daniel, from Sojourn, is featured about 1:40 in.
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One thing that flows through the Old Testament covenants is the mission of Israel to be “missionaries” to the nations- that is, they were to live in such a way that they make יהוה known. Yet, we also see that there was a definite failure of this mission at times, so that when it was actually accomplished it seems to be an exception rather than the rule. The book of Jonah is probably the best known example of this reluctancy. So when I read Psalm 47.8-9, I can help but wonder what goes through the mind of an ancient Israelite who sang and celebrated the Psalter. Perhaps it is much like the way most Christians sing today? Vapid regurgitation of songs as “worship?” Here’s the Psalm:
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Oak Tree Software released Accordance 8.1 yesterday as a free upgrade to anyone who has version 8.0. Included in the update is a new design, that is much sleeker and more pleasing in my opinion, as well as some new enhancements to the diagramming module, including arcs and brackets. Here are some screen shots (click thumbnails for full-size):
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Thought I would put up a little status report as I’m nearing the end of the semester. Now that I got a few tests and quizzes out of the way, as well as the “harder” chapters for Hebrew, I have been tackling my paper for Systematic Theology I. The paper is on the Problem of Evil- but considering it’s only a 9 page position paper, it’s really hard to say all that I want to say. Basically, I’m looking at the two main types of arguments atheologians bring against theism. The first argument is the deductive argument that Christian theism is logically inconsistent with the existence of evil, and therefore necessarily false. If the argument is valid, then Christianity is proven to be false, and is irrational.
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