John Piippo

Spiritual Formation Class: On-line Participation

2012-01-27T12:02:00.000-05:00

Looks like there will be 60-80 people attending my Spiritual Formation class this Sunday evening at Redeemer.

If you want to attend see - An Invitation to Six Weeks of Spiritual Formation - Jan. 29 - March 11, 2012.

I also have some who will be taking my class on-line, from a distance. Here's how to do this if you want to.

***

FOR LONG-DISTANCE ATTENDEES

Send me an e-mail indicating that you will be joining me in this 6-week prayer experience. johnpiippo@msn.com

Because you will not be with us in person this Sunday night, Jan. 29, here are some instructions.

1. On Sunday evening, 5 PM, I will be sending everyone out to pray for one hour, using Psalm 23.

a. Please do the same. I will be sending you the handout I am using on Sunday evening, with instructions.

b. After the one hour of prayer, please write me an e-mail. Share with me the things you heard God saying to you.

c. I will respond back with feedback, plus instructions for the 6 weeks of prayer.

2. My teaching that evening will be available on-line for you to listen to. I'll send you the information/link so you can listen to this 1-hour presentation on A Theology of Spiritual Formation. (To my current and former seminary students: this 1-hour teaching is a mini-version of what I taught in our week-long class.)

3. Beginning Monday, Jan. 30, and continuing for the next 6 weeks, take one hour a day, 5 days a week, and go alone to a place and pray.

a. Find a place away from your home, workplace, and your car.

b. Meet with God for one hour.

c. For week #1 continue using Ps. 23 to meditate on.

d. For weeks 2-6 use John chapters 14, 15, and 16 for your meditation.

e. When God speaks to you, write this down in your spiritual journal.

f. If your mind wanders, write down where it wanders to. Note: Your mind always wanders to something like a burden. When this happens, follow 1 Peter 5:7 and “cast your burdens on him, for he cares for you.”

g. After these 6 weeks of prayer, write down highlights from your journal. Send these highlights to me, and I will respond back. Tell me what God said to you. Share with me what God has done within you and for you during this time.

4. During these 6 weeks I will send you things to read that I have written. Respond to me if you like.

5. If you have questions please let me know.

Blessings,

John Piippo

Our Productivity Does Not Define Us

2012-01-27T08:50:00.000-05:00

9-1-1 Memorial, New York City

I continue to slow-read Henri Nouwen's wonderful Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit. I can only take a few paragraphs of Nouwen at a time.

Read this quote and marinate in it...

...for a long while.

This is classic Nouwen, the kind of wisdom that, when it descends from the mind into the heart, sets a person free.

"A life without a quiet center easily becomes delusional. When we cling to the results of our actions as our only way of self-identification, we become possessive, defensive, and dependent on false identities. In the solitude of prayer we slowly unmask the illusion of our dependencies and possessiveness, and discover in the center of our own self that we are not what we can control or conquer but what is given to us from above to channel to others. In solitary prayer we become aware that our identity does not depend on what we have accomplished or possess, that our productivity does not define us, and that our worth is not the same as our usefulness." (P. 19)

Thank you, God, for Henri Nouwen.

Henri Nouwen's Definition of Prayer

2012-01-27T07:34:00.001-05:00

Queens, New York City

"The discipline of prayer is the intentional, concentrated, and regular effort to create space for God."

- Henri Nouwen, Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit (p. 18)

Yearn For the Ocean Before Building the Ship

2012-01-26T16:46:00.000-05:00

Battery Park, NYC, the Statue of Liberty in the distance

"If you want to build a ship, don’t summon people to buy wood, prepare tools, distribute jobs, and organize the work, rather teach people the yearning for the wide, boundless ocean.” (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

For too long the church has attempted to build ships (the methods of ministry) before they have adequately learned to yearn for the wide, boundless ocean ( the vision of the God's kingdom). Dallas Willard, in The Divine Conspiracy, points out that Jesus' eyes envisioned a God-bathed, God-permeated world. Jesus craved to sail the high seas of His father's kingdom. The desire to bring others on this adventure drove all that he said and did. Given this desire, ship-building comes naturally.

Our greatest task in spiritual formation is bringing people back to that place of yearning for the wide, boundless ocean. In this regard the current problem in most churches is one of vision. I've seen people transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit and begin to catch Jesus' vision of the kingdom, only to be encouraged by the church “to buy wood, prepare tools and distribute jobs." Ship-building then becomes more of an obligation than a delightful joy.

We must, within our churches, re-imagine what God's own life is like, and then just sit there for a while and bask in the reality of His vastness, goodness, justness, and love. We must recognize how indispensible this yearning, this ferocious desire to explore the vast, boundless ocean, is. Everything begins and ends here.

Robin Collins's Fine-Tuning Argument for God's Existence

2012-01-26T16:38:00.000-05:00

Monroe County Community College

(For my MCCC Philosophy of Religion students)

Oral Exam Question #5 - Explain Collins's Fine-Tuning Argument for God's existence.

1. Give the "biosphere" example.
2. The universe is analogous to such a biosphere.
3. The universe is "fine-tuned" for our existence. For example, "If gravity did not exist, masses would not clump together to form stars or planets, and hence the existence of complex, intelligent life would be seriously inhibited."
4. State the argument:

Premise 1. The existence of the fine-tuning is not improbable under theism.
Premise 2. The existence of the fine-tuning is very improbable under the atheistic single-universe hypothesis.
Conclusion: From premises (1) and (2) and the prime principle of confirmation, it follows that the fine-tuning data provides strong evidence in favor of the design hypothesis over the atheistic single-universe hypothesis.
5. The "prime principle of confirmation" is: whenever we are considering two competing hypotheses, an observation counts as evidence in favor of the hypothesis under which the observation has the highest probability (or is the least improbable).
6. Give John Leslie's firing sqauad analogy: "If fifty sharp shooters all miss me, the response “if they had not missed me I wouldn’t be here to consider the fact” is not adequate. Instead, I would naturally conclude that there was some reason why they all missed, such as that they never really intended to kill me. Why would I conclude this? Because my continued existence would be very improbable under the hypothesis that they missed me by chance, but not improbable under the hypothesis that there was some reason why they missed me. Thus, by the prime principle of confirmation, my continued existence strongly confirms the latter hypothesis."

***
A FEW ADDITIONAL COMMENTS

1. Hawking and Mlodinow's The Grand Design can be understood as an atheistic response to the fine-tuning argument. They acknowledge the appearance of fine-tuning:

"Most of the fundamental constants in our theories appear fine-tuned in the sense that if they were altered by only modest amounts, the universe would be qualitatively different, and in many cases suitable for the development of life. For example, if the other nuclear force, the weak force, were much weaker, in the early universe all the hydrogen in the cosmos would have turned to helium, and hence there would be no normal stars; if it were much stronger, exploding supernovas would not eject their outer envelopes, and hence would fail to seed interstellar space with the heavy elements planets require to foster life. If protons were 0.2 percent heavier, they would decay into neutrons, destabilizing atoms... The emergence of the complex structures capable of supporting intelligent observers seems to be very fragile. The laws of nature form a system that is extremely fine-tuned, and very little in physical law can be altered without destroying the possibility of the development of life as we know it." (Grand Design, 160-161)

But, for Hawking and Mlodinow, "the multiverse concept can explain the fine-tuning of physical law without the need for a benevolent creator who made the universe for our benefit." (165)

Collins responds to this in his essay. For the purposes of our class we will not discuss the multiverse issue, important as it may be.

2. The anthropic objections plays an important part in Hawking and Mlodinow's objections to the fine-tuning argument. Collins, in citing John Leslie's "fire squad" analogy, writes:

"According to the weak version of so-called anthropic principle, if the laws of nature were not fine-tuned, we would not be here to comment on the fact. Some have argued, therefore, that the fine-tuning is not really improbable or surprising at all under atheism, but simply follows from the fact that we exist. The response to this objection is simply to restate the argument in terms of our existence: our existence as embodied, intelligent beings is extremely unlikely under the atheistic single-universe hypothesis (since our existence requires fine-tuning), but not improbable under theism. Then, we simply apply the prime principle of confirmation to draw the conclusion that our existence strongly confirms theism over the atheistic single-universe hypothesis."

Collins then gives Leslie's example to illustrate this.

More on Grief From Ben Witherington

2012-01-26T14:52:00.000-05:00

Ben Witherington is writing out his grief at his daughter's sudden, unexpected death.

The latest post is: Good Grief: Soundings, Part Three – The Hope of the Grieving.

For more go here.

"Zeitgeist"

2012-01-26T11:08:00.000-05:00

So serious. So funny!

(I'm re-posting this. Only because one of my students asked me about this today.)

I recently had a student ask me: "What do you think of the movie "Zeitgeist?" I told her I had seen it, and made a few comments over a year ago. I decided to make a more thorough response, based on Dr. Mark Foreman's recent presentation at EPS entitled "Challenging the Zeitgeist Movie: Alleged Parallels between Jesus and Ancient Pagan Religions."

"In 2007 the ZEITGEIST movie appeared on the internet and had over 50 million viewers in the first three weeks. ZEITGEIST is a two hour documentary film that attempts to argue, among other things, that Christianity is a non-historical myth based purely on teachings and ideas from earlier pagan myths. The primary evidence used to support this claim is the number of parallels between Christianity and other religions. This presentation assess both the claim and the methodology of this argument noting a number of fallacies with this kind of reasoning."

I listened to Foreman's presentation and made the notes below. For $1.99 you can download it and listen - it's very thorough. Nearly everything below is straight from Foreman. It's a bit rough, but hopefully you can see that, though "Zeitgeist" has achieved a level of internet popularity, it is weak, non-scholarly, and grievously erroneous.

*****

What is the “Zeitgeist” movie?

• “Zeitgeist” literally means “spirit of the age.”

• It was released online in June 2007.

• Within 3 weeks of its release it already had 50 million viewers.

• “Zeitgeist” is a two-hour documentary conspiracy film.

• It alleges to show three frauds/myths: 1) the Christian story; 2) the terrorist attacks of 911 were really government-sponsored attacks; and 3) the domination of international events by world bankers (everything that is happening in the world is a because of a conspiracy of international bankers).

• The thesis of the Christianity part of the film is this: Jesus Christ never existed, but is simply a Jewish version of an ancient pagan mystery religion based on sun worship.

To begin with: there are a few astronomical errors in “Zeitgeist.”

One thing that is in error is the claim that Sirius follows the 3 stars/kings in Orion’s belt, that on Dec. 25 they align that way. The fact is they align that way every night. There’s nothing special that happens on December 25.

It is also false that on Dec. 25 these three stars in Sirius point to the sunrise. That would mean Orion would have to be in the eastern part of the sky around sunrise on Dec. 25. But Orion is a winter constellation. This means that beginning at the time of winter (late October) it begins to rise on the horizon. By December, at midnight, Orion is straight up in the sky. Where, then, is Orion at sunrise on December 25? Orion is in the west. It’s nowhere near the east. This is just a mistake in astronomy.
These two elementary astronomical mistakes should tell us we need to wonder about the accuracy of this film’s claims.

Four General Comments about “Zeitgeist”

The film argues that the story of Jesus Christ is a myth, incorporating various aspects of other pagan religions. This is called “the pagan copycat theory.” The idea is that Christianity is just a “copycat” of other religions that are out there.

The tactic “Zeitgeist” uses to argue this point is this: list characteristics of pagan deities that are parallel to the story of Jesus. Then claim that the Gospel writers borrowed from these pagan stories and invented Jesus. Some of the claimed parallels are:

• Born of a virgin

• Born on Dec. 25

• Hailed as a “savior” by his followers

• Give royal and divine titles

• Has 12 disciples

• Was baptized

• Performed miracles (especially turning water into wine)

• Was crucified

• Was resurrected after three days

• His death and resurrection are celebrated in a ritual meal

The idea of using parallels is the essence of “Zeitgeit’s” argument. Biblical scholar Samuel Sandmel noted that finding parallels can be overdone, and used the word “parallelomania,” meaning: “that extravagance among scholars which first overdoes the supposed similarity in passages and then proceeds to describe source and derivation as if implying literary connection flowing in an inevitable or predetermined direction.” We’ll see that “Zeitgeist” is parallelomanical. Foreman says that “’Zeitgeist’ is parallelomania on steroids.”

This is an old idea. There is nothing new here. Many people, when they first see “Zeitgeist,” think “Wow – I have never heard that before!” Zeitgeist-parallelomania was propagated in the late-18th century on Germany by a school called the religionsgeschichte school, the “history of religions” school.” Here was the idea that all religions are related to one another and they all evolved over time. “Christianity” was just another step in the evolutionary process of religions. This 19th -century theory lasted a few years, and in the 1930s began to die out. The reason it died out what that critical scholars looked at it and said, “There’s actually no evidence to support it at all.” Many of the ideas in “Zeitgeist” come from these 19th-century sources. For example, the movie is indebted to James Frazier’s popular The Golden Bough. Frazier’s book has since been discredited by nearly all critical scholars.

Dorothy Murdock was a major consultant for this movie. She wrote a book under a pen name, Acharya S. Her work has even been debunked by Robert Price who himself ultimately agrees with idea that Jesus never existed. Price thinks “Zeitgeist got it all wrong.”

So the idea behind “Zeitgeist” is an old idea – there’s nothing new here.

Another point is: there are going to be some similarities between religions. (20) That should not surprise us. Most religions, for example, believe in a godlike figure. Most religions have rites and ceremonies, and incorporate a meal in their religion. Re. the meals, acknowledging this is not to say that the meals are the same thing as the Lord’s Table in the Jesus story. Just because there are similarities does not mean they are the same, or even say the same things. Most religions try to deal with the universal human condition and questions all peoples ask. Foreman says: “Similarity does not imply dependence.” And that, precisely, is the charge “Zeitgeist” makes against the Jesus story.

For example, one major difference between Christianity and pre-existing pagan religions is that the latter are syncretic while Christianity is exclusivistic.

Note: There is evidence that the Christian church adopted Dec. 25 from pagan religions and used it for the birth of Christ. But that happened in the 4th century, not the 1st century. So it is not original, not an “origins” thing. For the Zeitgeistian parallelomaniac to make her case she has to show that there is a 1st-century pagan influence on Christianity that created the myth of Jesus.

Another point is this: the whole parallelism argument is an example of post hoc, ergo propter hoc. In philosophy this is caused the “post hoc fallacy,” aka the “false cause fallacy.” To explain see here.

“The post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this therefore because of this) fallacy is based upon the mistaken notion that simply because one thing happens after another, the first event was a cause of the second event. Post hoc reasoning is the basis for many superstitions and erroneous beliefs.

Many events follow sequential patterns without being causally related. For example, you have a cold, so you drink fluids and two weeks later your cold goes away. You have a headache so you stand on your head and six hours later your headache goes away. You put acne medication on a pimple and three weeks later the pimple goes away. You perform some task exceptionally well after forgetting to bathe, so the next time you have to perform the same task you don't bathe. A solar eclipse occurs so you beat your drums to make the gods spit back the sun. The sun returns, proving to you the efficacy of your action.”

Here’s the form of the post hoc fallacy:

1. Event A happened before event B.

2. Therefore, event A caused event B.

For example:

1. It rained just after I washed my car.

2. Therefore, washing my car caused it to rain.

So the fact that a previous pagan religion had a similar belief to that of early Christianity does not in itself prove that the previous religion was the cause of particular belief of Christianity.

Another point: the whole Z-theory rests on the premise that Jesus did not even exist at all. Why does the Z-movie need to hold that very extreme position? Because the Z-claim is that every major event in Jesus’ life is a fabrication of early Christians, and therefore are all mythical. However, to make the claim that Jesus never existed at all is to go against an enormous amount of critical scholarship. Foreman is correct when he says “The vast majority of critical scholars [underline “vast” to include extremely liberal and even radical scholars] acknowledge the existence of the historical Jesus.” For example, John Dominic Crossan [who is, understatedly, no conservative scholar] says that “the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is the most verifiable historical fact of the ancient world.” Yet according to the “Zeitgeist” movie all these critical scholars are wrong. “Zeitgeist” addresses none of this. That’s but one major problem of this movie.

Foreman then points out 7 fallacies "Zeitgeist" commits.

1. The Generalization Fallacy

This fallacy says: all the ancient religions follow one universal model. This is simply false – there was no one universal belief all these pockets of pagan religions copied. But that’s what Zeitgeist’s astral-theology claims; viz., all of them were basically about sun worship. Not true. There were similarities. They all brought in the vegetative cycle because they were from agrarian societies. Foreman says it is a “simplistic fiction” to believe that there was one universal archetype that all these religions followed. Rather, each developed on their own.

Listen to Foreman’s explanation here of how Z-theorists (copycat theorists) first look to Jesus and then pull out things from various pagan religions that look similar and then claim Christianity is just a copy of them. And then, the Z-theorists stand back in awe and marvel at how similar Christianity is to pagan religions. But of course, since they are using the life of Jesus to guide their “research!” But “Zeitgeist” does not deal with the many things in pagan religions that do not look like Jesus. (I find this really funny…)

2. The Terminology Fallacy

This fallacy does this: events in the lives of the mythical gods are expressed in Christian terminology in order to subtly manipulate viewers into accepting that the same events that happened in the life of Jesus also happened in the lives of the mythical gods. For example, in the movie they talked about the “Messiah Solar God.” Messiah? “Messiah” is a distinctly Hebrew term. Talking about Horus being a “Messiah” is simply absurd. Another is example is the term “baptism.” “Baptism” is a Jewish-Christian concept. You don’t find it in other religions. But Zeitgeisters, in talking about Horus being thrown into the Nile, call it Horus’s “baptism.”

Here are three more examples of the terminological fallacy.

a. “Born of a virgin.” Horus – “born of a virgin.” Krishna – “born of a virgin.” Attis – “born of a virgin.” But these are not really virginal births, at least in the same way we mean when we talk about Jesus.

Take Horus. The most common birth story of Horus is that he was the conception of two gods, Osiris and Isis. Osiris was killed and his body is cut up into 14 parts which were buried all over Egypt. Isis, his wife, looks for the missing parts and collects them. She finds all the parts but one – his penis. So she creates a penis out of wood which she has sexual relations with. Out of this Horus is born. Can this be called a virginal conception? I don ‘t think so. That’s not what is going on here.

How about Attis? Attis was “born of a virgin,” according to “Zeitgeist.” The story is this. Zeus masturbates and spills his seed onto a mountain. His seed becomes a pomegranate tree. Nana, eventually the mother of Attis, is sitting under the pomegranate tree when an apple falls into her lap. She conceives. And Attis is born. This is (understatedly) not exactly the same thing that happens with Jesus.

How about Krishna? Stories of Krishna being virginally conceived come from the 7th century, 700 years after Jesus. And Krishna’s mother had seven children before Krishna, so she was hardly a virgin!

So we don’t really have virginal conceptions in the pagan gods. But why would they say that? Because Z-theorists want to make the pre-Jesus pagan gods sound like Jesus.

b. “Crucifixion.” We are told that many of these gods were crucified. But is that true?

Krishna was shot in the heel by an arrow. Attis castrates himself, flees into the woods, and dies. What about Horus? It depends on which version of the Horus myth you go with. One version tells us he never died. Another versions tells us he died by being stung by a scorpion. In other versions Horus’s death is conflated with that of Osiris. How can Z-ers claim such mythological gods were “crucified?”

Foreman quotes Dorothy Murdock, one of the major consultants for the movie, who says: “When it is asserted that Horus or Osiris was crucified, it should be kept in mind that it was not part of the Horus-Osiris myth that the murdered god was actually held down and nailed on a cross. Egyptian deities (including Horus) were depicted in cruciform with their arms extended or outstretched.” When Murdock says they were “depicted in cruciform” she is already trying to manipulate us. Because they were merely depicted with their arms out. Egyptologists will tell you that he died with his arms out because he was the Sky-god and was “suspending the sky.” This is, truly, deceptive “scholarship.”

c. “Resurrection.” We are told that all these gods were resurrected from the dead. Oh really? Let’s look at the original sources.

After Horus died he became “lord of the underworld.” He never came back to this world. But this is like a resurrection, right, since he’s still alive?

Attis was eventually turned into a pine tree. He’s back in this world, but not exactly resurrected.

Krishna – the earliest tradition says he returned to the spirit world. In the 4th and 5th centuries there was a teaching that Krishna was resurrected. But that’s long after the Jesus-story.

The great scholar Jonathan Z. Smith writes: “All of the deities that have been identified as belonging to the class of “dying and rising deities” can be subsumed under the two larger classes of “disappearing deities” or “dying deities.” In the first case the deities return but they never died; in the second case they die but they do not return. There is no unambiguous instance in the history of religions of a dying and rising deity.”

3. The Biblical Fallacy

Copycat theorists often make claims about the life of Jesus that are not based on the Gospel accounts but originate from other sources. In “Zeitgeist” things are mentioned, in support of the argument, that are not even in the Bible. For example, the “December 25” date. These pagan gods were “born on Dec. 25.” Why is this important to Z-ers? Because we celebrate Jesus’ birthday on Dec. 25. But the Gospels tell us nothing about when Jesus was born. We have no evidence for the exact date of Jesus’ birth. The date of Dec. 25 came about in the 5th century. There is some evidence that they may have picked that date because of pagan religions. So in the fifth century the Church was influenced by pagan religions. But it was not influenced by pagan religions in the first century. Which is the century when Christianity was birthed.

What about the “three kings?” In the Horus story there is nothing about three kings coming to worship Horus at his birth. But note: there are no three kings, in the Bible, at the birth of Jesus. It’s true we sing Christmas songs about them. But the Gospels do not tell us that these figures were “kings.” They are called “magi,” who are priests in the Zoroastrian religion. They don’t tell us how many there were. There’s no “three” there, in the Gospels. Yes, there were three gifts there. But this does not mean there were three kings, one for each gift. And, Jesus was probably about three years old when these magi came. Yet “Zeitgeist” wants to talk about these supposed “three kings.” But the issue is not what later Christians came to believe, but about original sources.

4. The Chronological Fallacy

This fallacy says that in order for the copycat charts to succeed one must provide evidence that the “parallel” chronologically preceded the writing of the Gospels and the New Testament epistles which were all written in the first century A.D. For the Z-idea to work one must have evidence that these teachings were around before the first century A.D. so that the early Christians could “borrow” from them and create their myth about Jesus. Do we have that kind of evidence? The answer is: No. There’s no evidence of any pagan mystery influence in first-century Palestine. The mystery religions evolved and changed over time, and as they did their beliefs and practices and narratives changed. Therefore what we know about them from later on is not necessarily true about what they taught earlier. This is important because most of the evidence we have about the mystery religions comes from the second and third centuries, when they were at their peak. We have very little evidence about what these mystery religions were like in the first century. Foreman says “because they evolved so much you simply can’t take the fallacious step and say that what they believed in the third century they must also have believed in the first century.”

In fact, we have evidence to the contrary. Third-century pagan mystery religions may have been adopting beliefs in light of Christianity. Rather than Christianity being influenced by the mystery religions, there is evidence that the mystery religions borrowed from Christianity.

5. The Source Fallacy

Supporters of “Zeitgeist” often talk about how well-documented the movie is. It refers to a lot of sources. But it’s not the quantity of documentation that makes the difference, it’s the quality of that makes the difference. “Zeitgeist” is weak on the use of primary sources. And it is weak on citing authoritative-scholarly sources. And most of Z’s cited secondary sources are from scholars who have been discredited and whose work has been abandoned long ago. These Z-sources often make undocumented assertions. They speculate on causal relationships.

One of Foreman’s favorite examples is Z’s use of the constellation Virgo, which is said to be Mary, since the constellation looks like the letter ‘M.’ And that’s why we have “Mary,” and “the virgin Mary.” Aha! Virgo? M-shaped? Therefore, the Virgin (Virgo) Mary? The claim is that the constellation symbol ‘M’ was the cause of the biblical name ‘Mary.’ But no evidence is given for this astounding claim. Let’s pause here to give thanks that, we hope, our reasoning never sinks to this depth…

There’s a real problem in choosing primary sources for these ancient pagan religions, since in many cases there is no single authoritative text available.

6. The Difference Fallacy

This is where copycat theorists over-emphasize the supposed similarities and they ignore enormous substantive, relevant differences between these religions. “Zeitgeist” gives us the idea that all these religions are saying basically the same thing, and that is simply not true. Especially the pagan religions in comparison to Christianity.

For example, mystery religions are cyclical, generally following the cycle of birth-death-rebirth (vegetative-harvest cycles) ad infinitum; Christianity is linear (history is heading in a certain direction).

Mystery religions involve secrecy with secret initiation rites; Christianity was completely open – no secret rituals and rites.

For mystery religions doctrines were completely unimportant – they were religions of emotion and mystical experience; in Christianity doctrines and beliefs were central. That’s why mystery religions were so syncretic – it didn’t matter what you believed.

Mystery religions were void of any ethical element; Christianity emphasizes moral teachings and living a righteous life.

Mystery religions were not interested in the historicity of their myths; Christianity is wrapped up in its history. The mystery religions self-referred as “myths.” But in Christianity, if Christ is not risen in history, the whole thing fails.

Finally, the meaning and purpose of Jesus’ death in history is completely different from the death of the mystery religions’ gods. In Christianity Jesus died for us, for the sins of mankind. None of the pagan gods died for anyone else. Most of them died under compulsion – they were murdered. Jesus, on the other hand, died willingly. Pagans mourned the death of their gods. Jesus’ death was viewed as a victory.

The Z-copycat theorists do not address these differences.

Shampa Rice at Redeemer Feb. 28-29

2012-01-25T12:51:00.000-05:00

Shampa Rice will speak at Redeemer Tuesday evening, Feb. 28. 7 PM. Worship first, then Shampa.

Shampa will then cook for us at a dinner/fund-raiser Wed. night, Feb. 29. This is for her orphanage in India. Doors open at 6. Dinner served at 6:30. (Information about sign-up coming soon.)

THE MENU FOR WED. EVENING:
--The menu is:

stir fried veggies with naan--appetizer
Tandoor Chicken
Vegetable rice Biriyani
Yogurt salad
Mango icecream--dessert

I've been told Shampa is a very good cook!

More details forthcoming.

Contact: Redeemer Fellowship Church, 5305 Evergreen, Monroe, MI 48161 734-242-5277

Grieving the Loss of a Child

2012-01-25T09:26:00.000-05:00

Havin lost a child myself, my heart goes out to Ben Witherington and his family at the unexpected death of his daughter Christy.

Ben is now writing out of his grief. See...

Good Grief: Soundings, Part One (What Does Grief Look Like)

Good Grief: Soundings, Part Two – Five Things Not to Say to the Grieving

Interview With Bruce Cockburn

2012-01-25T09:17:00.000-05:00

Christianity Today has an interview with Canadian singer-songwriter-guitarist Bruce Cockburn. I've listened to his music since the early 1980s. There is not a better lyricist than he.

I've written about Bruce in these posts:

Bruce Cockburn

Bruce Cockburn Sings In The Shack

Dune-Climbing with Mother Teresa, Bruce Cockburn, & Greg Boyd

The Power of Music (& Why the Taliban Wants to Banish It)

The Enduring Influence of Nietzsche

2012-01-25T08:43:00.000-05:00

It's no secret, at least to my philosophy students, that my favorite atheist is Friedrich Nietzsche. Were I an atheist (I am not) my "Bible" would be Thus Spoke Zarathustra, as it was for Jack London and Eugene O'Neill.

Here's another nice little article on Nietzsche's enduring cultural influence, generated out of U-Wisconsin historian Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen's American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas.

How Can I Build More Prayer Time Into My Life?

2012-01-24T13:30:00.000-05:00

Chair, at Payne Theological Seminary

One of my former seminary Spiritual Formation students wrote to me:

Dear Dr. Piippo:

I enjoyed the class last year and I continue to be consistent in mediating and taking some time to spend with God. Do have any suggestions that would allow me to develop a greater consistency? I do it but not everyday.

Sometimes I allow life situations get in the way. I work full-time, go to Payne and a Ministerial Training Institute, so I do some meditation for class but it doesn't feel the same as the time you sent us out with the 23rd Psalm.

Thank you

My response:

Hi _______ - it is so good to hear from you!

Here are some ideas.

My assignment was to spend one hour a day, 5 times a week, praying and meditating on Scripture, and then writing down in your journal what God spoke to you. If you cannot do an hour, then start by scaling back. How about 10-15 minutes a day? Let this time be focused.

My experience is, if someone can build 15 mibutes with God a day, there will be times when God so moves upon that person that the time will extend.

You might return to Psalm 23, and spend a few weeks again with those verses. They never grow old!

Then, return to John chapters 14-15-16.

Then, go to Matthew chapters 5-6-7.

Go slow. Slow-cook in these verses.

And be prepared and ready. For what? For God to move upon you and within you. Remember - He loves you!

Blessings,

JP

Prayer & the Myth of "Quality Time"

2012-01-24T13:20:00.000-05:00

Monroe County

"Prayer" is: talking with God about what we are doing together. It's about what you and God are doing together.

Prayer is being in relationship with God. This is about a relationship - you and God, connected in relationship.

A praying person is in a love-relationship with God. This is about a bride, being with her bridegroom. This is why the idea of "a little quality prayer time with God" is inappropriate.

One reason marriages fail is that courtship habits and being together for long periods of time stops.

What is needed, in prayer as well as marriage, is a lot of time, "quantity-time," together. Brief amounts of time will not be quality times without ongoing quantity-time.

Quantity-time with God needs certain qualities. For example, multitasking the God-relationship diminishes the quality of it.

Spend lots of time with your God, and spend it in certain ways. Such as: focusing, listening, opening one's heart towards God, worshiping, thanking, meditating, and contemplating.

In prayer, attend to God. Be with God. A lot.

An Invitation to Six Weeks of Spiritual Formation - Jan. 29 - March 11, 2012

2012-01-24T12:50:00.000-05:00

(Note: anyone is invited to attend this - I would love to have you come!)

I have been teaching prayer, spiritual formation and transformation, and dweling in God’s presence for 35 years. I’ve developed my own materials and have been blessed to teach them in many environments, to include: seminaries, pastors retreats and conferences, churches, all over the world, and in our own Redeemer Ministry School.

As an experiment I want to offer and invite you to take my Spiritual Formation class in a 6-week course. Here are the details.

If you want to sign up please call the Redeemer office (734-242-5277) or e-mail me (johnpiippo@msn.com). Persons who have studied this material with me may re-take it. Why not invite a friend to take it with you?

REQUIREMENTS

Attend two 3-hour classes.

1. Sunday evening, Jan. 29, 5-8 PM. An Introduction to Spiritual Formation.

2. Sunday evening, March 11, 5-8 PM. Sharing our experiences with one another; wrap-up.

Six weeks of prayer and journaling:

- Feb. 5 - March 18

- Pray one hour/day, 5 days/week

Read and reflect on my writings on spiritual formation and prayer. Needed: e-mail access – I will e-mail you the readings.

Needed: Commitment to fully engage in this experience.

Materials Needed:

- Bible

- Journal to write in

Cost: Free.

If you want to prepare in advance for this here are some books I recommend.

Boyd, Greg. Present Perfect: Finding God In the Now. (Zondervan: 2010) This is an excellent, clearly written little book that contains some deep spiritual insights that are not found in other spirituality texts. Greg’s meditation on “death” is worth the price of the book.

Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection. The Practice of the Presence of God (Garden City: Image, 1977). A spiritual classic by a 17^th-century monk that is still relevant today, and is especially good at knowing God in the everyday, mundane tasks of life.

Foster, Richard. A Celebration of Discipline (San Francisco: Harper and Row). The modern classic on the spiritual disciplines. If you have not yet read this it should be one of your choices.

Kelly, Thomas. A Testament Of Devotion (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1941). This brilliant, provocative little text makes my top ten ever-read books on Christian spirituality. A modern classic.

Merton, Thomas. Seeds (Shambala: 2002). A killer collection of Merton quotes. A tremendous introduction to the depth, wisdom, and discernment of Thomas Merton. Prophetic.

Nouwen, Henri. In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership (Harper and Row). A brilliant little book, among the best I have ever read on pastoral leadership.

Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love (Image Books: 1999). I find it hard to express how much God used a slow, meditative reading of this book to effect changes in my life.

Nouwen. The Way of the Heart (New York: Ballantine, 1981). A beautiful, meditative little book on solitude, silence, and prayer.

Peterson, Eugene. The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction (Dallas: Word, 1989). I have read this book two or three times. It always reminds me of my priorities in pastoral ministry.

Willard, Dallas. Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God (IVP: 1999)

For more information e-mail me at: johnpiippo@msn.com

Preaching in New York City

2012-01-23T21:14:00.000-05:00

I preached at Faith Bible Church's annual conference in New York City this past weekend. Tony Shen is translating my message into Mandarin.

The Kalam Cosmological Argument for God's Existence

2012-01-23T16:47:00.000-05:00

Notes For my MCCC Philosophy of Religion Students. (The Kalam Argument is one of the arguments for God's existence that is included in most philosophy of religion textbooks.)

The Kalam Cosmological Argument for God's Existence

1. State the argument.

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore. the universe had a cause.

If 1 and 2 are true, than the conclusion logically follows.

2. Defend Premise 1.

Premise 1 seems to be true, since things do not just pop into existence.

In order to prove Premise 1 false one would have to find something that begins to exist that is uncaused, and that seems unlikely. It also seems unscientific.

3. Defend Premise 3.

Reason 1 - current cosmological theory states that our universe began to exist. This is also called the "Big Bang Theory of the Origin of the Universe."

Our universe has an age (13.7 billion years). Whatever has an age necessarily has a beginning (or birth).

Reason 2 - the impossibility of an actual infinite.

Craig uses mathematician David Hilbert in support of the idea that an actual infinite cannot exist, because it leads to absurdities.

For example, consider "Hilbert's Hotel." Imagine a hotel with an infinite number of rooms. Let's say the rooms are all occupied, one person in each room. How many people are in this hotel? The answer is: an infinite number. Next, suppose that persons in the even-numbered rooms check out. How many people leave the hotel? The answer is: an infinite number. How many are left in the hotel? An infinite number. But our "infinite hotel" is now half full. All of which is absurd.

A "potential infinite" exists, but potential infinites can never reach actuality.

4. What must the cause of the universe be God?

As the argument shows, it follows logically that the universe must have a cause.

Using concveptual analysis, or the Principle of Sufficient Reason, whatever cause the universe must itself be timeless (therefore changeless), immaterial, non-spatial, and very powerful.

It must also be personal (a personal agent who made a choice to make a universe), since if the cause of the universe was timeless and impersonal the conditions for causing a universe to exist would be timelessly there, and the universe would have always existed. But we have already seen that this is not the case (Premise 2).

Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that a timeless, changeless, immaterial, non-spatial, very powerful person agent is the cause of our universe. And this describes (in part) what is meant by "God."

*****
A Final Note - Here is William Lane Craig on the cause of the universe as a personal creator.

"Given the truth of premisses (1) and (2), it logically follows that (3) the universe has a cause of its existence. In fact, I think that it can be plausibly argued that the cause of the universe must be a personal Creator. For how else could a temporal effect arise from an eternal cause? If the cause were simply a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions existing from eternity, then why would not the effect also exist from eternity? For example, if the cause of water's being frozen is the temperature's being below zero degrees, then if the temperature were below zero degrees from eternity, then any water present would be frozen from eternity. The only way to have an eternal cause but a temporal effect would seem to be if the cause is a personal agent who freely chooses to create an effect in time. For example, a man sitting from eternity may will to stand up; hence, a temporal effect may arise from an eternally existing agent. Indeed, the agent may will from eternity to create a temporal effect, so that no change in the agent need be conceived. Thus, we are brought not merely to the first cause of the universe, but to its personal Creator."

On the Moral Argument for God's Existence: Objective Moral Values Exist

2012-01-22T08:18:00.000-05:00

(Some notes for my thos who came to my workshop at Faith Bible Church yesterday - "The Moral Argument for God's Existence and the Failuren of Atheism")

William Lane Craig’s metaethical argument for the existence of God is:

1) If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.

2) Objective moral values (OMVs) do exist.
3) Therefore God exists.

How can we argue for the truth of the second premise?

How do we know there are OMVs?

We recognize them. Like we recognize (1) “The lights in this room are on.”

The truth or falsity of (1) is objective, not subjective.

Consider (2) Racism is wrong. Is (2) true or false? The correct answer is: true.

But how do we know this?

Philosophers like Craig and Paul Copan (as well as Alvin Plantinga and William P. Alson) say that we just recognize that (2) is wrong, in the same we that we recognize the truth or falsity of (1).

So, moral values are apprehended. Like we apprehend, by sense experience, that the lights are either on or off. Moral values function like Plantingian properly basic beliefs.

Objection: you can’t prove that (2) is right.

This argument does not claim to indubitably prove this.

There are very few things in this life about which we can be absolutely (deductively) certain.

E.g., Craig says, “How do you know you’re not just a body lying in the Matrix and that all you see and experience is an illusory, virtual reality?” (All Craig quotes from "How Can God Be the Ground of Morality?")

- Yes, it’s possible that is true.
- But I have no good reason to doubt what I see.
- “The mere possibility provides no warrant for denying what I clearly grasp.” (Craig)

So, while I cannot deductively prove that (2) is right, I have no good reason to doubt that (2) is right.

Objection: moral values differ from culture to culture.

This is partially true. Not entirely. Because nearly all cultures believe, e.g., (3): Stealing is wrong.

The truth that many moral values differ from culture to culture does not cause us to believe moral values are not objective. Just as, should we find a culture that believes the earth is flat, we should not thereby reject the objective truth that the earth is round.

What if some culture believes (2) is wrong?

- The answer is: that culture is wrong. The reason we can say “racism is wrong” and “racists are wrong” is because “the ability to detect error presupposes an awareness of truth.” (Paul Copan, “God, Naturalism, and the Foundations of Morality,” in The Future of Atheism; Alister McGrath and Daniel Dennett in Dialogue, 142. Note: Copan's essay is one of the best I have ever read on this subject. He's an excellent writer and a very good thinker.)

- Copan writes: “Humans may misperceive or make logical missteps. However, such mistakes hardly call into question the general reliability of our sense or reasoning powers; indeed, they presuppose it.” (142)

Copan: “We possess an in-built “yuck factor” - basic moral intuitions about the wrongness of torturing babies for fun, of raping, murdering, or abusing children. We can also recognize the virtue of kindness or selflessness, the obligation to treat others as we would want to be treated, and the moral difference between Mother Teresa and Josef Stalin. Those not recognizing such truths as properly basic are simply wrong and morally dysfunctional.” (143)

Atheist Kai Neilsen writes: “It is more reasonable to believe such elemental things as [wife-beating and child abuse] to be evil than to believe any skeptical theory that tells us we cannot know or reasonably believe any of these things to be evil… I firmly believe that this is bedrock and right and that anyone who does not believe it cannot have probed deeply enough into the grounds of his moral beliefs.” (in Copan, 143)

Which means: basic moral principles are discovered, not invented.

We would expect this sort of thing if God exists. We would not expect this sort of thing “if humans have emerged from valueless, mindless processes.” (Copan, 143)

Objection: evolution has programmed us to believe in certain values. Therefore those values are not objective.

- This commits an informal logical fallacy - the genetic fallacy.

- Craig says it’s “at worst a textbook example of the genetic fallacy and at best only proves that our subjective perception of OMVs has evolved.”

- The “genetic fallacy”: when someone tries to invalidate a view by explaining how that view originated or came to be held.

- Such as: “You only believe in democracy because you were raised in a democratic society.”

- Compare: “You believe the earth is round because you were born in a scientific age.”

(Note: one of yesterday's attendees shared this. "My professor told us that moral values came about ss an evoutionary adapatation for our survival." But even if that is true, this only explains how persons came to believe that, e.g., Boiling babies for fun is morally wrong. The professor than concluded that we don't need God to explain moral values. But this is to mistake moral epistemology for moral ontology. In no way does this affect our moral argument as stated above. It also commits the genetic fallacy if one concludes that there is no God.)

Objection: But if evolution is true why should I think moral values are objective?

- Answer: because you clearly apprehend them. Evolutionary theory gives you a reason to doubt the objectivity of moral values ONLY IF naturalism (atheism) is true.

- This objection “begs the question” (an informal logical fallacy) because it presupposes that naturalism is true.

- Craig agrees that, if naturalism is true (if there is no God), then our moral experience is illusory. That, precisely, is Craig’s first premise in his metaethical argument for God’s existence.

Which is: If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.

If God does not exist then a moral universe is far less likely.

But, as Copan writes, If humans are God’s image-bearers, then it’s not surprising that they are capable of recognizing or knowing the same sorts of moral values – whether theists or not. (142)

Biblical Meditation & Spiritual Transformation

2012-01-21T17:52:00.000-05:00

There is a close relationship between biblical meditation and spiritual transformation. God works through meditation to change the human heart. It’s like this: meditate on something and that something “becomes you.” You get changed. If the subject matter of your meditations are God’s thoughts, then those thoughts will get inside you and have a transforming effect on you. Meditation is a main spiritual discipline leading to soul renewal and transformation.

The practice of meditation is found in the Christian Scriptures. For example, in Genesis 24:63 we read that Isaac went out into a field to "meditate." What did he do? I once asked my seminary Old Testament professor this question to which he answered, "Isaac mumbled." This "mumbling" was a repetitive activity using some word or message from God. Biblical meditation is an “over and over” kind of thing.

We see the repetitive, ongoing nature of meditation in a passage like Psalm 1:1-3:

"Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.
But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.
He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does he prospers."

Here meditation is a "day and night" activity. If it’s not “day and night” then it’s not “meditation.” You’re not meditating if you just look at something quickly and then move on. In Psalm 1 meditation’s object is "the law of the Lord." Imagine the depth in the psalmist who made God’s law his continuous meditation. Then contrast this to the superficial life that only skims over the surface of things. Meditation’s purpose is to go deeper.

What, precisely, is meditation? Meditation is to reading as digestion is to eating. Think of a cow chewing its cud. Biblical "food" chewed over and over becomes more assimilable to the body. In the end, this "food" becomes one's body. When the food we take in becomes us we are nourished and transformed.

To be transformed by God requires going slow. Biblical meditation takes time. Conversely, "Mc-meditation" is "fast food" that produces only an upset stomach. Meditation requires chewing slowly on things, looking at them from many perspectives. To meditate is to dissect the scripture or moment piece by piece, and then to examine each piece.

Psalm 1 claims that meditation's result is a fruitful, prosperous life in whatever one does. My experience is the more I prayerfully meditate the more God's thoughts and desires become my thoughts and desires. To do this is to enter deeper waters. In terms of what God wants my life becomes more fruitful and prosperous. One’s “depth of soul” is increased.

Biblical meditation is not simply another form of self-help. Rather, it is essentially for the sake of God, not for the sake of self. While meditation can bring personal fruitfulness, its telos or purpose is God. A correct theo-logy is always centered on God (theos) and not on persons. Thus Psalm 19:14 petitions, "May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer." Meditation brings personal reward, but its raison d'etre is to please God.

Historically, there are at least five objects of Christian meditation. The first is meditation on the Scriptures. Psalm 119:97 reads, "O, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long." An example of this would be to take a passage such as Psalm 23 and carry it with you day after day, morning and evening, saying it over and over and over.

Secondly there is meditation on the creation. Psalm 8:3 says, "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place..." Jesus asks us to consider the lilies and look at the sparrows. To "consider" takes time. It’s much more than just a passing glance. God has much to teach us when we consider the creation. Meditation on the creation often leads to a clarity about life and death. I wonder how much attention would I pay to life and death if I didn’t take time to meditate on God’s creation, since in it there is the constant theme of life vs. death?

Thirdly, Christian meditation makes the world and the activity of God in the world its subject matter. Psalm 77:11-2 reads, "I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will meditate on all your works and consider all your mighty deeds." Personally this means three things for me: a) I will ponder the history of the activity of God in the Scriptures; b) I will meditate on the current condition of the world and discern God's activity in it; c) I will remember often all that God has done in my life.

Fourth, there is meditation on the mysteries of Christ. It is always helpful to, for example, take much time to meditate on the cross of Christ. A classic example of this in Christian history is The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.

A fifth object is meditation on one's self in the light of God's searching Holy Spirit. Here we pray with the psalmist, "Search me, O God, and know my heart. See if there are any wicked ways or anxious thoughts in me." Here persons like Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, and Richard Foster lead the way.
The human heart is a fragile instrument, easily put out of tune with God. Meditation "retunes" our heart to God's heart. Meditating on God's thoughts in Scripture or on the creation are main ways of getting back in tune with God. To be "in tune" with God is to be in God's presence. Meditation is a spiritual discipline that escorts us into the presence of God.

Speaking in New York City

2012-01-20T17:08:00.000-05:00

What a beautiful time I had with the Payne Theological Seminary M.Div. students, and now friends, this past week. Blessings to all of you as you embark on this new prayer and abiding adventure!

Linda and I are flying out of Detroit to NYC tonight to be with our good friends Dr. John and Rosie Hao and Faith Bible Church.

Tomorrow I'll be speaking at their annual conference, and leading two workshops, plus preaching twice on Sunday morning. Linda will glad two workshops tomorrow. Dan and Allie will speak on Sharing Christ with Muslims Sunday morning.

My Sat. morning message is - "Fight the Good Fight of Faith" (1 Tim. 6).

My Sat. workshops are:

Healing and Deliverance Ministry
The Moral Argument for God's Existence and the Failure of Atheism

On Sun. morning my two messages are:

On Psalm 23
Distinguishing the Real Jesus from False "Jesuses"

Linda's two Saturday worskshops are:

Keys to Christ-Centered Relationships - Friendship, Dating, Courtship, and Marriage
Deeper Life Transformation - How Christ’s Love Changes Us for His Kingdom

Spiritual Formation - God Wants to Morph Our Controlling Heart Into a Trusting Heart

2012-01-19T21:38:00.000-05:00

Near Wilberforce, Ohio

I’ve taught spiritual formation classes at a number of theological seminaries as well as weekend retreats for pastors and Christian leaders. I begin my classes by sending the students out to pray for one hour using Psalm 23 as their focus. When they return from praying I ask them the question “What did God say to you?” My experience is that one-third of them don’t get past verse 1, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.” God asks them the question, “Am I really your shepherd?” Arguably, this is the basic question of one’s spiritual life. Henri Nouwen has said that the basic question is “Who do you belong to?”

Find out who or what you belong to, and place your trust there. To trust is, ipso facto, to let go of control. If you’re driving and I’m riding and you see my foot move towards the gas pedal while my hand appears on the steering wheel you’re going to ask the obvious – “Don’t you trust my driving?” In that case my answer would have to be “No.” Analogously, to trust in God means allowing him to be the driver and going along for the ride.

One biblical example of this is in John 21:13-18. Jesus asks Peter three times the question “Do you love me?” As Peter confesses his love for Jesus, Jesus then says: “I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go." Verse 19 tells us that “Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.” Then he said to him, "Follow me!"

Henri Nouwen uses this passage to illustrate the control vs. trust situation. He writes that "maturation in a spiritual sense is a growing willingness to stretch out my arms, to have a belt put around me and to be led where I would rather not go (John 21:18)." It’s either “dress yourself and go where you want to go” (control) or “be dressed by someone else and go where they want you to go” (trust). To follow Jesus is to go where he wants you to go. When someone becomes a real follower of Jesus they won’t be dressing themselves anymore.

Thomas Merton says that "maturity," for the Christian, is learning how to be a "sheep." "As long as we remain sheep we overcome and are victorious. But as soon as we are wolves we are beaten: for then we lose the support from the Shepherd who feeds not wolves, but only sheep." If the Lord is my shepherd and I, one of his sheep, hear his voice and follow, that’s the sign of a trusting heart.

God wants to form our hearts in Christlikeness. (Galatians 4:19) God wants to free us from con-formation to the pattern of this world and trans-form (meta-morph) the shape of our hearts into Jesus-likeness. The morphing happens by God, in his presence. We learn to abide on Christ, and trust the process. A major way our heart is morphed is in the change of our allegiance. We change from a controlling heart to a trusting heart. To talk about heart-transformation from control to trust is to move in the “deep waters of the human heart” (Proverbs 20:5).

The “control” thing many of us are addicted to is part of the kingdom of darkness. How so? For one thing, it’s mostly illusory. We may think we’re in control of a lot of things, and marketers may tell us if we buy their product it will give us greater control over something, but the truth is that we mostly control nothing. Things we have no control over include: the weather, what other people think, time, the future, our past, and death. We have very little control, if any at all, over: sickness, the economy, our physical appearance, addiction, and our feelings. What, really, do we have control over? The TV controller? Maybe, but I doubt it. I think the “I’m in control of things” attitude is an illusion. Any feeling that “I’m in control” may make you feel that is the case, but the feeling is non-indicative of any reality that corresponds to it. The only option, then, is that we must trust. But in what or in whom? In money? Governments? The self? Gerald May writes: “In our culture, the three gods we do trust for security are possessions, power, and human relationships. To a greater or lesser extent, all of us worship this false trinity.” (May’s insight is similar to Richard Foster’s who states that the three things people mostly trust in if it’s not God are money, sex, and power.)

Some people are control addicts. My own belief is that a controlling person is a fearful person. When confronted with situations that cause us to fear the common response is to want to gain control over the situation. That’s not all bad. The problem comes when we become addicted to control. Since, as we have already seen, most of life is out of our control, the control addict is fearful most of the time and tries to gain control over situations that are, fundamentally, out of their control. Like trying to control the hearts and minds of other people. This cannot be done. Yet the control addict tries, because they fear people who don’t act or think or feel or choose as they do. Such people are “out of their control,” and they don’t like it.

Surely God is not in our control. God is not, as Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, our “divine butler.” While some Christians seem to think they can control God, the great truth is that God is “sovereign.” See, e.g., the parable of the workers in the vineyard where those who get hired last get paid the same as those who worked all day. The all-day workers cry out “Hey, that’s not fair?” To which the owner responds “It’s my money, right? And I can do what I want with it.” God is in control, we are not. And in some cases we are truly out of control.

To have a controlling spirit is counter to what’s really going on in this world. What can we do? The answer is: God wants to and is able to transform (meta-morph) your controlling heart into a heart that trusts in him. Place yourself consistently in God’s presence and God will, over time, do this. It is then that you will discover, in experience and not merely in theory, that God can be trusted. As this has been happening in my heart my experience is one of greater and greater freedom and hope. I want a heart that more greatly trusts in God. I am placing my trust in God.

The Need

2012-01-19T21:34:00.000-05:00

(Road next to Payne Theological Seminary campus.)

The Need

I received the gift of a Bela Fleck dvd, inserted into the player, and sat down to watch, in awe. I was not prepared to be awed, but I was. I had thought I was a guitar player!

I began playing guitar when I was five years old. I did a two year degree in music theory on my way to, I envisioned, a full-time musical career. I taught guitar in the music studio owned by Rick Nielsen’s father in my hometown of Rockford, Illinois. I’ve written songs, published them, had them recorded by other artists, played on tv, practiced a million hours and given tons of lessons. But I cannot play like Bela Fleck. As I watched him I thought, “I am a man of unclean guitar playing.” I am in need.

So are you. We’re all a bunch of very needy people. My fellow musician and songwriter David once wrote, “Yet I am poor and needy; may the Lord think of me. You are my help and my deliverer; O my God, do not delay.” We all need guidance. We all need direction. We all need help, in this life. It is a good thing to recognize one’s neediness, for this realization puts one in position to be guided, directed, and helped. Only the needy know they need a shepherd. Only those who realize their need for guidance can be guided.

In a moment of God-inspired musical genius David wrote the first line to arguably the greatest worship song ever written. Out of his neediness David wrote, “The LORD is my shepherd.” All of David’s own talents were not enough. As brilliant as King David was, his own intelligence did not suffice. As courageous as he was, he still struggled with fear. David, the greatest King and leader Israel ever had, knew that he needed himself to be led. He needed a shepherd. And for that, David chose well.

In the seminary classes I teach on spiritual formation I send my students out for times of prayer, using Psalm 23 as their meditative focus. I instruct them: “When God speaks to you, write it down.” My experience is that God doesn’t let 40% of them get past verse 1. God asks them the question: “Am I really your shepherd?” That is the foundational question for all spiritual formation, transformation, renewal, and restoration. The answer to that question determines whether a person’s life and ministry will be authentic or inauthentic, relevant or irrelevant. This is because unless the Lord builds the house, we labor in vain; unless we are shepherded by God, we’re shepherded by some other god (like self; others; money; sex; power). The key question of the spiritual life is, as Henri Nouwen said: Who do you belong to?

The necessary precondition for authentic, relevant God-leadership is: being-led. To lead is to be led. To be led one must heart-recognize one’s great neediness. This is, spiritually, a very good place to be. How do we come to understand this?

I don’t think you can force this idea on people. I believe that the heart-recognition of personal neediness is given to people as a revelation. You cannot command this for other people. It’s a revelation, a wakeup call, that God desires us all to have, but which all do not see. If one consistently abides in God’s presence, God himself will show you this. It will be like me, popping in the dvd, thinking I’ve got my guitar-playing in a powerful place, watching Bela Fleck begin to play, and then comes the revelation of personal guitar-neediness. If I was thinking that I didn’t need more instruction to play like that, that I didn’t need help and shepherding to play like that, such a thought has been, like a bubble, burst.

In the spiritual life neediness is cool, self-reliance sucks. If I really wanted to play like Bela Fleck I’d need Bela Fleck to shepherd me. If I really want to be used by God I need to be constantly shepherded by God. Pray for a revelation of personal neediness. God wants to reveal this to you. He will, as you spend time with him. Your spiritual life and effectiveness for the sake of God and his Kingdom is at stake.

You Can't Force Spirituality

2012-01-19T21:32:00.000-05:00

(Flamingos, in the San Diego Zoo)

Once Linda was talking on the phone with someone and I heard her tell them, "You can't force or demand spirituality." Now that is so true! When that takes place mostly bad things happen. People feel controlled, manipulated, pressured, instead of invited.

Jesus invites us to follow after him. He does not say, "Behold, I stand at the door and break it down and come in to your house."

At the root of forcing or demanding people to be in relationship with God is the illusion that we can change people. It can't be done. Or, if it appears that our guilt-manipulations have worked to "change" someone's heart we have before us a prisoner, captive and in chains. I know that when someone tries to change me I get this weird, angry feeling that makes me want to get away from them.

Parents take note: you do not control your child's heart. Spouses take note: you do not control your significant other's heart. So let it go. Many years ago God spoke to me and told me, "John, why are you trying so hard to change other people when you can't even change yourself?" (All this is different from setting boundaries and having household expectations. And the fact that we can't control others does not mean we have no right to speak to the truth in love to others.)

While I usually resent people who try to change me, I have been greatly influenced by a few people in my life. Influence is different than control. The heart of influence is getting before God, consistently throughout life, and crying out "Change my heart, O God!" Enter deeply into a life-process of personal transformation. The break-up that happens inside you will be used by God to influence others. You will see breakthrough around you. That's how it has happened with me. The real influencers in my life have been people who worked on their own souls before God and did not expend their lives trying to do the impossible thing of changing the hearts of others. As I have been with these (very few) people, God has used what he was doing in their lives to speak to me about my life. What a wonderful, grace-filled way for God to do this!

Spiritual Formation - God Deconstructs the False Self

2012-01-18T21:13:00.000-05:00

(For my Payne Theological Seminary Spiritual Formation students.)

Spiritual Formation - It Happens in the Depths of the Human Heart: Deconstruction of the False Self

John Piippo, Ph.D

The first five stages of relevant, authentic spiritual formation and transformation are:

1. The Need – recognition of how needy we are of personal, inner change.

2. The Gap – realization as a revelation of the holiness of Christ, and therefore of the great gap between ourselves and Christ.

3. Recognition of the magnitude of the needed transformation. God wants to metamorph the human heart into Christlikeness. (Gal. 4:19; Rom. 12:1-2)

4. Only God can do this – realization that we cannot self-transform by our own striving and will power into Christlikeness.
5
. Therefore, consistently get into the presence of God. Abide in Christ. You cannot consistently dwell in Christ and remain unchanged.

Now we take note of where spiritual transformation takes place. This is the matter of the locus of authentic spiritual formation.

For the most part this is not an external “makeover,” but a heart-transformation. It will have external results, but this is essentially, as Dallas Willard has written, a matter of the “renovation of the heart.”

One biblical verse that gives a window into this is Proverbs 20:5: “The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out.” God moves in the deep waters of the human heart. While our physical bodies waste away in this life, Paul says that our spirits are being renewed day by day. (2 Corinthians 4:16) Spiritual formation is, therefore, a “day by day” thing. We are either green and growing, or dead (“ripe and rotting”).

What happens as we habitually live in God’s presence? What does the formation of our hearts look like? I have seen that one way God moves in the deep waters of our heart is to deconstruct negative aspects of the self. Especially the self-obsessive aspects of what Thomas Merton called the “false self,” and what Paul Tournier called our “persona.” This becomes the realization of Jesus’ stark, ascetic either-or: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.” (Luke 9:23-24) Out of a daily abiding in Christ emerges a daily denial of self. This “denial involves, I suggest, negative, false aspects of the self.

As we take up the cross every day, the deconstruction of the self is an everyday thing. This is crucial, since every day the self will rise up and try to assert itself against the ways of God. But God desires to defeat our self-obsessiveness so we can experience renewal and transformation.

One way God does this is by calling us into times of solitude. This is why Henri Nouwen has called solitude “the furnace of spiritual transformation." If solitude is a "furnace," what gets burned away? The answer is: the negative aspects of the "self." Unless we daily practice self-denial, self-centered ideas will rise up against the ideas of God. Here are some of the negative aspects of the self I have discovered as I have allowed God much time to search me out.

1. Self-love

On the surface this seems obvious. But the self-love issue goes very deep. Self-love, writes Thomas Merton, "is the source of all boredom and all restlessness and all unquiet and all misery and all unhappiness - ultimately, it is hell." How much easier is it to love the self before loving others and living sacrificially in relationship to them. One British politician's actions were once described as "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his friends for his life." I discover in my heart a deep-rooted propensity to love “me” as my first priority.

As a young Christian I was counseled to keep my priorities as follows:

a. Love God first

b. Love others second

c. Love self

I have found that when I live this way the love I have for myself is healthy and godly. But as Merton said, while all this seems counterintuitive to the proud lover of self, in reality it’s all boredom and misery.

2. Self-hatred

The opposite of self-love is self-hatred. Sometimes, I think, thee two are the sides of the same coin. Self-hatred is as self-obsessively sinful as self-love; i.e., both are manifestations of self-obsessiveness.

Unfortunately, I have much personal experience in hating the self. Merton writes: "How are we going to recover the ability to love ourselves and to love one another? The reason why we hate one another and fear one another is that we secretly, or openly, hate and fear our own selves. And we hate ourselves because the depths of our being are a chaos of frustration and spiritual misery. Lonely and helpless, we cannot be at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we cannot be at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God."

There is a simple and profound solution to self-hatred: Be at peace with God, and you will be at peace with self. Be at peace with self, and you will be at peace with others.

Love God, and you will love self. This will lead to a truly transforming experience where, instead of beating one’s self for faults and failures, we will rejoice in the greater purposes of God manifested in them. God knows how to draw glory even from our faults. Not to be downcast after committing a fault is one of the marks of true sanctity.

I would like this kind of sanctified life. It speaks to me of a life of radical freedom that issues forth from a deep life of dwelling in the presence of God.

3. Self-pity

Self-pity is one of the more punishing kinds of self-obsession. Self-pity cannot coexist with spiritual formation. In one of my seminary classes I was talking about holding “pity parties” when a pastor named Samuel from Ghana asked, “What do you mean by “pity party?”” I said, “Samuel, the next time I hold one for myself I’ll invite you so you can see.” Unfortunately, I could write a book and call it How To Host Your Next Pity Party.

More than once the words have come into my mind, "Poor me! They are not treating me right - and after all I've done for them!" Personal deprivation and even mistreatment lead to the emotion of anger. In this regard Henri Nouwen asks, what else is anger but the response to the sense of being deprived? Much of my own anger comes from the fact that my self feels deprived. When one chooses to express this anger by hosting a pity party the self-obsession has begun.

I especially like the way the Russian author Leo Tolstoy described “Ivan Ilyich,” of whom it was said that “no one pitied Ivan the way he wished to be pitied.” Consider this description of Ilyich’s pitiful disease:

“What tormented Ivan Ilych most was the deception, the lie, which for some reason they all accepted, that he was not dying but was simply ill, and the only need keep quiet and undergo a treatment and then something very good would result… The awful, terrible act of his dying was, he could see, reduced by those about him to the level of a casual, unpleasant, and almost indecorous incident (as if someone entered a drawing room defusing an unpleasant odour) and this was done by that very decorum which he had served all his life long. He saw that no one felt for him, because no one even wished to grasp his position… [W]hat most tormented Ivan Ilych was that no one pitied him as he wished to be pitied. At certain moments after prolonged suffering he wished most of all (though he would have been ashamed to confess it) for someone to pity him as a sick child is pitied. He longed to be petted and comforted.”

When you hold a “pity party” and invite yourself and others to it, the focus is on you. It’s all about how you have been hurt, how you have been mistreated, and how you have been wronged. The ruling emotion of pity is bitterness. But one can’t be at the same time bitter and fulfilling the Great Commandment to love God with all your heart. Self-pity seems to be the opposite of heart-formation. Therefore self-pity needs to be denied, because it keeps us from being fulfilled in Jesus.

4. Self-hiding/kosmeo

Being a fake or a phony requires a self-willful act of transformation into a false presence before others. One erects a false persona and hides behind it. Here is a façade of renewal and transformation that may or may not fool others. In this regard God has told me, "John, you do not need to pretend to be what you are not.” God told me this because, sadly, I have postured and performed before others. For example, I have raised the banner of my meager accomplishments before others and hid behind them.

We are not to be “cosmetic” Christians. Self-hiding is untruth. One definition of the Greek word for “truth" is "unhiddenness." Truth is that which is out in the open and can thus be seen. To walk in truth requires an appropriate transparency. This is important because, spiritually, God is a God of truth, works in truth, and rejoices in truth.

What people need from Christian leaders is not another performance, but a sense of God’s real presence. God’s presence can only be mediated through authentic Christian leaders. Christian leaders are to be role models of authenticity. We can even reveal failures and flaws and confess sins before others since what others need is not us, but God Himself.

5. Self-justification

To be haunted and consumed by what others think of us is self-obsessive. Any Christian leader will receive criticism. Not all of it will be kind. There have been times when I’ve gone to prayer and my mind has wandered to someone else thinks of me. It is then that, like Adam and Eve in the garden after the Fall, I reflexively begin to defend myself. I argue, in my mind, against my imaginary accuser. I mentally present myself as superior and construct a wall of justification and defense.

My own experience is that this sort of self-justification never feels renewing and transforming. And what arrogance to assume these people are thinking about me. The truth is that we would worry less about what other people think of us if we would realize how little they do.

Thomas Merton writes that God wants to free us from defending our own selves. He says: "A humble man can do great things with an uncommon perfection because he is no longer concerned about incidentals, like his own interests and his own reputation, and therefore he no longer needs to waste his efforts in defending them. For a humble man is not afraid of failure. In fact, he is not afraid of anything, even of himself, since perfect humility implies perfect confidence in the power of God, before Whom no other power has any meaning and for Whom there is no such thing as an obstacle."

Self-justification is the enemy of spiritual formation precisely because transformation requires more than an occasional admittance of personal guilt and failure. A “perfect person” could never experience spiritual formation.

6. Self-righteousness

Biblically, any righteousness we have is to be found in Christ. “Righteousness” is “imputed” or “credited” to us on the basis of what Christ has done on the cross. Therefore it seems ludicrous to posture oneself, pharisaically, as morally and spiritually superior to others.

As foolish as this is I confess to having done it and to feeling stung by the Holy Spirit’s conviction of my sin. In the past I have, sadly, mocked certain Christian leaders on the basis of their ministry style and personal appearance. God has broken me of this, and pointed out that He has not appointed me the judge of all that is right and wrong when it comes to other Christian leaders. Yet the deep thing that wants to do this is still to some degree within me. At least God has pointed it out to me and my prayer is that God would remove it entirely from my heart.

I hate it when others are self-righteous towards me. I need to hate it more that I can be self-righteous towards others. The correct spiritual posture for spiritual formation is humility and the look into the mirror.

7. Self-will

Here is the unfortunate idea that I don't need help from anyone. I can help myself, thank you. Here is the Christian leader who, like a lone cowboy in a Clint Eastwood western, rides into town to help others but doesn’t need any assistance himself. Here is, I think, one of the most spiritually dangerous ideas we can model for others. This is because the ideal shifts from trusting in the Lord to trusting in self.

Scripture tells us that, in order to “build the house,” God must do it. Otherwise we labor in vain. Richard Foster refers to this mentality as “will worship.” Are you impressed with the accomplishments of human will power? If what we mostly see in God’s church are the results of great human will power and awesome human creativity persons will eventually get the message that the church can be built by persons without God.

God wants to break self-will in us. Historian Michael Grant writes that, to Martin Luther, it seemed that God and Satan are "locked in a struggle to mount the same horse: the human will." Self-will deludes us into believing we can renew and transform ourselves. Thus it is preventive of real spiritual renewal and transformation.

8. Self-centeredness

I believe that self-centeredness can be distinguished from self-love and pride. A self-centered person makes choices in light of their effect on the self. For example, my son Josh and I went to the river park to feed the seagulls and saw a gull that had no beak. Our other-centered hearts went out to this disabled creature. We tried to throw bread to it. We felt sorry for it. But 20 gulls were also there. Every time we threw a crumb, the gulls made straight for it, pushing and shoving, and gobbling it down. Gulls are monomaniacs" who think of only one thing which is: their self. The gull with no beak got no bread.

Thomas Merton wrote, "To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell." Not a lot of godly renewal and transformation happens on the doorstep of hell. Simply put, to experience what God wants for us in these areas our world needs to revolve around Him, and not ourselves.

9. Self-seriousness

One quality of those Christian leaders who have influenced me is the ability to easily laugh at themselves. Those who have mentored me either personally or from afar have not taken themselves with ultimate seriousness. The people we minister to need to take God seriously, not us. Otherwise, when we die, what will they be left with? It’s instructive to note that an hour after our funeral service people will be talking about the fried chicken and potato salad, and not us. We will quickly become a forgotten thing as people get on with their lives.

Henri Nouwen expresses it this way: "The fact that I get so easily upset because of a disappointment, so easily angered because of a slight criticism, and so easily depressed because of a slight rejection, shows that Your love does not yet fill me. What does a small - or even a great - failure mean, when I know that You are with me in all my sorrows and turmoil?"

And Nouwen further adds: "I am constantly surprised at how hard it is for me to deal with the little rejections that people inflict on each other day by day... When I swallow these rejections, I get quickly depressed and lonely; then I am in danger of being resentful and even vengeful. But it is such an institutional problem that I can hardly imagine that I can ever be without it. ...Maybe all these small rejections are reminders that I am a traveler on the way to a sacred place where God holds me in the palm of his hand. Maybe I do have to become a little more indifferent towards all these ups and downs, ins and outs, of personal relationships and learn to rest more deeply in him who knows and loves me more than I know and love myself."

2 Corinthians 4:16 says, "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day."

Thomas Merton said, "I think the chief reason why we have so little joy is that we take ourselves too seriously. Joy can only be real if it is based on truth, and since the fall of Adam all man's life is shot through with falsehood and illusion. That is why… Bernard [of Clairvaux] is right in leading us back to joy by the love of truth. His starting-point is the truth of our own insignificance in comparison with God. To penetrate the truth of how utterly unimportant we are is the only thing that can set us free to enjoy true happiness."

A spiritual secret to not “losing heart” and day by day inward renewal is to acknowledge how “utterly unimportant we are.” But are we not very important to God? Of course! But the more serious we are about living daily in the presence of God the less we’ll need to take our own self so seriously. I have found this to be freedom.

A few other false aspects of the false self that God wants to free us from include:

10. Self-attention (vs. "Secret" service

Some Christians have a real need to be liked, praised, or respected, and that's one of the motivations for why they serve. We need "a spirituality... which helps us to distinguish service from our need to be liked, praised, or respected."

- Henri Nouwen, The Living Reminder, p. 30.

11. Self-inflation (vs. Glorification of God)

"The source of all sorrow is the illusion that of ourselves we are anything but dust. God is all our joy and in him our dust can become splendor."

- Merton, The Sign of Jonas, in TYTM, p. 27.

12. Self-ignorance (vs. "Search me O God, and know my heart")

"He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love will not have anything to give to others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas."

- Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 164.

Deconstructing Self-Hatred to Gain God-Acceptance

2012-01-18T21:09:00.000-05:00

(Bolles Harbor)

Over the years I have met many people who have hated themselves and thought themselves to be worthless. This includes people who are Christians. This almost always comes from having parents who failed to express unconditional love towards them or who abandoned them. Because I see a lot of parental failure in today’s culture, and add to this the cultural belief that personal worth is based on one’s accomplishments, there’s a lot of self-hatred out there.

Self-hatred is one side of a coin the other of which is self-love. Self-love is a form of pride which thinks “I am really something (in the sense of being better than others).” Self-hatred is a form of shame which thinks “I am really nothing.” Both are forms of self-obsession. And both are spiritually cancerous things that harm spiritual formation and maturity.

Unfortunately, I have much personal experience in hating the self. I have, at times, thought of myself as a nothing and worthless. This is not a good place to be. It’s especially painful to beat on one’s own self. It feels more painful than having others hate me. How can this be overcome? To get at the roots of self hatred I have found hope in the Scriptures as mediated through many who have sought God long and hard about this issue.

Such as Thomas Merton, who writes: "How are we going to recover the ability to love ourselves and to love one another? The reason why we hate one another and fear one another is that we secretly, or openly, hate and fear our own selves. And we hate ourselves because the depths of our being are a chaos of frustration and spiritual misery. Lonely and helpless, we cannot be at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we cannot be at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God."[1]

Here is a simple and profound solution to self-hatred: Be at peace with God, and you will be at peace with self. Love God, and you will love self. This will lead to a truly transforming experience where, instead of beating one’s self for faults and failures, we will rejoice in the greater purposes of God manifested in them. Dom Augustin Guillerand said, "God will know how to draw glory even from our faults. Not to be downcast after committing a fault is one of the marks of true sanctity."[2]

To be free of self-hatred know the love of God. To know that God loves you, and that your worth is not the same as your usefulness and your being-loved is not related to your failures and accomplishments is to live a life of radical freedom. I have found that the more I dwell deeply in the presence of God, like a branch attached to Jesus the Vine, the more I hear God’s voice telling me “John, I love you.”

[1] Thomas Merton, The Living Bread; in Through the Year With Thomas Merton, p. 66.
[2] Dom Augustin Guillerand, in A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants, p. 208.

Payne Theological Seminary January 2012 Spiritual Formation Class

2012-01-18T20:57:00.000-05:00

Here are my new friends at Payne Theological Seminary - M.Div. students in my Spiritual Formation class. It is such an honor for me to be with them. And, God is meeting us this week!

Payne Theological Seminary - Day 2

2012-01-18T08:06:00.000-05:00

This is Day 2 of my Spiritual Formation class at Payne Theological Seminary.

We meet at 9 AM.

I'll give some brief instructions, and then send the 27 seminary students out to pray for one hour, using Psalm 23 as their meditative focus. When God speaks to them, they will write it down.

After this hour we'll gather in the small groups we formed yesterday. Each one will share what God said to them. One person will take notes.

After 30-40 minutes, everyone will return to class. The persons who took notes will share with the entire class. During this time I take notes. Then I do some teaching, coaching, and sharing my onw God-discernment of what God is doing. During this time I give the Spirit free reign to direct me.

Then I will begin teaching my Theology of Spiritual Formation.

I am so thankful to be here in Wilberforce (Ohio), at this historic and living place, with such an excellent class of new friends!

How to Hear From God

2012-01-17T21:44:00.000-05:00

If "prayer" is defined as "talking with God about what we are doing together," how can we learn to hear the voice of God and distinguish it from other voices, even from our own voice?

My answer is:

1. Abide in Christ.
2. Saturate yourelf in Scripture.
3. Hang around people who do 1 and 2.

What Prayer Is

2012-01-17T21:40:00.000-05:00

Chicago

The best definition for "prayer" I have ever heard is from Dallas Willard. Willard says: "Prayer is talking with God about what we are doing together."

This is communication, with God, about The Mission.

In real prayer we received comfort, healing, deliverance, and rescue. We receive encouragement. We are told that we are loved. We receive correction. We get directions, which call for obedience.

Currently, my prayer life is more defined by listening than speaking. I do bring many requests to God. I also expect to hear much from God.

In prayer we meet with our Commander, and receive our "marching orders."

Willard's definition significantly ups the ante regarding our life. It makes following Jesus more exciting, as well as more real. He really does expect us to follow. This gets very practical, especially when we hear God say "I want you to do this _______."

Olaudah Equiano

2012-01-17T06:59:00.000-05:00

(I'm teaching my first session of Spiritual Formation today at Payne Theological Seminary in Wilberforce, Ohio.)

I'm reading Robert Kellemen's Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. One of the stories Kellemen shares is of a boy named Equiano. Equiano was born in 1745 in Benin, then known as Guinea. When he was just ten years old his life changed forever. Equiano wrote:

"One day, when all our people were gone out to their works as usual, and only I and my dear sister were left to mind the house, two men and a woman got over our walls, and in a moment seized us both; and, without giving us time to cry out, or make resistance, they stopped our mouths, tied our hands, and ran off with us to the nearest wood." (45) Eventually Equiano and his sister were separated and never saw each other again.

Equiano was placed on a slave ship. Sailing across the Atlantic, the majority of slaves died. Kellemen writes: "Captured Africans were spooned together lying on their sides in ships that pitched with every wave. Together they wept and moaned in a forced community that cut across tribal and cultural lines." (51)

Rice University professor Anthony Pinn "describes the bitter waters as the appalling transition from personhood to property. The Africans left Africa connected to family, community, and continent; they were reborn as chattel. They moved from capture to rupture, a ritual passage of rebirth from one reality to another. Dying to what was and what could have been, they were born into what never should have been." (51; from Pinn, Terror and Triumph, pp. 28-35)

Equiano wrote of his experience on one of these hell ships, as he feared he would be eaten as he was forced aboard. "I was not long suffered to indulge my grief; I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life; so that with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste anything. I now wished for the last friend, Death, to relieve me." (In Ib., 51)

These words, written by a boy, should never have been. Where were the real followers of Jesus? (One real Jesus-follower, William Wilberforce (1759-1833), was to be born 14 years after Equiano's enslavement. Wilberforce died on 29 July 1833, shortly after the act to free slaves in the British empire passed through the House of Commons.)

Olaudah Equiano was transported along with 244 other slaves to Barbados, and then on the the British colony of Virginia. he eventually ended up in London, where he was involved in the abolitionist movement. He eventually wrote The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African Written by Himself. He closed his book with these words of counsel:

"I early accustomed myself to look at the hand of God in the minutest occurrence, and to learn from it a lesson of morality and religion; and in this light every circumstance I have related was to me of importance. After all, what makes any event important, unless by its observation we become better and wiser, and learn "to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before God!"" (Micah 6:8; quoted in Kellemen, 55)

The Deep Prayer Life of Martin Luther King

2012-01-16T07:22:00.000-05:00

When I first read Martin Luther King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail" I was deeply moved. How beautiful and eloquent, how persuasive and biblical it is. I remember thinking how I rarely heard the media talk about King's deep faith in Jesus while they applauded his civil rights actions. But only a spiritually deep person could write the kind of letter King wrote.

Lewis Baldwin of Vanderbilt University has written Never to Leave Us Alone: The Prayer Life of Martin Luther King Jr. Baldwin's book was reviewed and Baldwin is interviewed today on cnn.com. The impetus for his book lies in the following story.

When King accepted a request to lead African-Americans during a bus-boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, he began to receive death threats. One night, after yet another such threat, King began to doubt his decision. The CNN article reads:

"As the threats poured in, his fears increased for his wife, Coretta, and their infant daughter, Yolanda. He now wondered how he could relinquish his role as the boycott leader without appearing a coward. Then something happened that King would talk about for years afterward. He bowed over his untouched cup of coffee, and prayed aloud in desperation. King said he heard an “inner voice” that addressed him by name, and encouraged him to stand up for justice."

It was this prayer that inspired Baldwin to write his book. Yes, King was a brilliant orator. But he also had a deep prayer life. Baldwin says: "So much has been written about King's preaching and pulpit style… but strangely enough, scholars who have treated these subjects ignore King's prayer life. The experience reminded King that he could not depend on the resources of his talents and intellectual training to make it in the struggle. He came to see more clearly that religion had to be real to him in a special way as he confronted the pressures of the movement."

"After the kitchen experience, King felt a special divine companionship, or what he called cosmic companionship, and this sustained him. Fear left him and he was assured that if he continued to stand up for justice and righteousness, God would be with him."

Baldwin is certain that much deep prayer and meditation preceded King's writing of "Letter from Birmingham Jail." The kind of writing in that letter only comes out of a deep soul, one that had spent much time in the presence of God and in dialogue with God. God spoke to King, and King was in a place to hear.

Today's "too busy to pray pastors" who want to do great things for God without dwelling daily in God's intimate presence should not wonder why they are not part of the Revolution.

M.L. King's Brilliant, Compassionate, Truthful, Prophetic "Letter From Birmingham Jail"

2012-01-16T07:00:00.000-05:00

Some years ago, as I was mentoring one of my doctoral students at Palmer Theological Seminary, I read, for the first time, Martin Luther King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail." My student, a black denominational leader, was doing her doctoral project on the "prosperity gospel" and its negative, un-Jesus-like influence in the African-American churches under her leadership.

I distinctly remember reading King's letter and being stunned by it - by its clarity, its Jesus-likeness, its prophetic nature, it's love, and its brilliance. Note a few of King's statements below. Better yet, read it in its entirety.

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." (King was viewed as being an "outside agitator." His point here was that, if we are all interconnected, then there is no such thing as "outside agitation."
"In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action."
"There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts." King wrote this in 1964. I was a sophomore in high school, and quite ignorant of what was going on. Now I feel embarrassed by this. I was not a Jesus-follower, and was unfamiliar with the Real Jesus and his words in the four gospels. Of course now we see that there were white Christians who: 1) looked aside at the racial injustice in America; 2) actively persecuted blacks; and 3) walked hand in hand against the racial injustice. Group #3 - the real, actual followers of Jesus. Group #2 - little antichrists. Group #1 - not following the Real Jesus, for whatever reasons.
"I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth." I love this statement, for its recognition of truth. Conflict (non-violent), in itself, is not only not bad but becomes the soil from which resolution grows. Needed: "friction." Unneeded: fight (violence) or flight (avoidance/denial).
"Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals." Agreed. And again, a wonderful insight, a very strong point for King to make (whether it was listened to at the time or not). I have found that the ethos of the "herd" often dissipates when the individual is isolated. That's one reason why I pay little attention to how people posture and perform in their peer groups, in the sense that herd-activity is not a good indicator of individual heart-thoughts. I also know this personally, especially since I was once and have been at times since someone who has "gone along with the crowd," only to have a troubled conscience about this as I lay in bed, alone, at night.
"For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied.""
Read this next part... and weep... "We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern."
King then writes about "just laws" and "unjust laws" using thinkers like Thomas Aquinas and Jewish philosopher Martin Buber's famous ("I and Thou"/Ich und Du) distinction. He emphasizes that he in no way wants to defy a law, but clarifies things by saying an unjust law is no law at all. That King has to defend himself at this point brings a sadness into my heart, and an anger against the racist anti-Jesus political system he is standing against.
King is simply brilliant and poetic as he uses logic to reason out his protest: "In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion?"
The entire section on "extremism" is brilliant and beautiful. Here's a portion to ponder and stand in awe of: "Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime--the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists." O my... Martin Luther King the prophetic truth-teller...
What about "Christians" and "the church?" King writes, correctly and humbly: "I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen... In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern."" The archaic suggestion that social action is not about "Christianity" is, simply, exegetical blindness. It's true that Jesus did not give us some political solution to our societal problems; it is also true that Jesus brought in the upside-down Kingdom of God which reaches down to society's marginalized and oppressed. Fortunately today we are seeing a resurgence of the full gospel of Jesus's active compassion for "the least of these" (Matthew 25).
King writes: "the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust." It's important to note that King's "Letter" is not mean-spirited. In fact, there's a grace and mercy throughout that for me makes what he writes so compelling, and brings a sadness into my heart. Just look at how he ends it...
"If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me. I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil-rights leader but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty. Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood, Martin Luther King, Jr.

A Good Photograph Is Hard to Find

2012-01-15T21:05:00.000-05:00

Photographer Abe Frajndlich says that even the greatest of photographers rarely take a shot that will be a "keeper."

He writes: "Practicing photography for more than 40 years, I have become aware of how seldom a photograph — a truly successful photograph — is made. How easy it is to click the shutter, and how nearly impossible to seize something significant through that act. The clicks that have mattered, historically speaking, were so few and far between, even for the masters."

Spiritual Formation Syllabus - Payne Theological Seminary, January 2012

2012-01-15T19:26:00.000-05:00

CM 150 Spiritual Formation

Payne Theological Seminary

Winter 2012 Intensive

SYLLABUS

Professor: John Piippo, Ph.D. Office Hours: By Appointment

734-731-1709 (Cell phone)

johnpiippo@msn.com

johnpiippo.com (my website)

PAYNE MISSION STATEMENT:

Payne Theological Seminary, a free standing graduate school mandated by the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AMEC) in 1844, is dedicated to the preparation of men and women for leadership in local, national and global ministries. Payne Theological Seminary offers an Afrocentric theological education focusing on teaching and research that emphasizes salvation which finds expression in liberation, reconciliation, social justice, and the dignity of all humankind. The seminary values African American history, the African American experience, and the biblical tradition.

INSTITUTIONAL GOALS

Students should demonstrate:

1. Servant leadership in local, national or global ministries as responsible stewards who serve with care, humility, strength of character and boldness as they articulate a vision, and inspire and guide others towards embracing higher ideals as articulated in Payne’s mission.

2. Tolerance expressed as unreserved acceptance of the universal concepts of love, justice and forgiveness that finds expression in the capacity to be inclusive and open to difference;
3. Spiritual formation, growth and transformation.

PROGRAM GOALS

Students will:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of their religious heritage.
2. Utilize their cultural context in applying Biblical Studies, Historical
Studies, Theology and Ethics and Practical Ministry.
3. Develop personal and spiritual formation as they progress through the program.
4. Enlarge their capacity for ministerial and public leadership.

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This course is designed to engage participants in an exploration and expansion of their inner spiritual life utilizing the spiritual disciplines. Personal transformation is an internal process that occurs as the individual allows God access to the whole of one’s being and life. The course combines:

1. Personal encounter with God

2.    Keeping a spiritual journal as a record of the activity of God in one’s life
3.    Corporate sharing of one’s experience with God
4.    Reading and reflecting on three required texts
5.    Biblical and theological reflection on key issues that arise in the life of one who seriously engages in the spiritual disciplines

COURSE GOALS:

1. To encounter and experience God

2.    To experience personal transformation
3.    To deepen one’s prayer life
4.    To discuss issues of personal transformation with colleagues in ministry
5.    To reflect biblically and theologically on this experience
6.    To understand personal spiritual transformation as the necessary foundation for all relevant church, urban, and global transformation

ASSIGNMENTS:

1. Attend and participate in class sessions

2.    Keep daily, structured devotional times with God for 6 weeks, 5 days per week, one hour per day, beginning the week of January 22, 2012.
3.    Keep a Spiritual Journal that records what God is saying to you during these times.
4.    Type out your journal and e-mail it to me using Microsoft Word. This document should be sent to me no later than Monday, March 5, 2012.
5.    Read the three books that are required reading. Write a 5-page paper summarizing the required reading. Submit this paper no later than March 5, 2012.

EVALUATION:

This is a pass/fail course.
Class attendance is required.
Keep the required prayer times.
Keep a spiritual journal and submit.
Read the required texts, write a 5-page reflection paper, and submit.

No laptops or texting in class, please.

The following is an outline of topics to be covered in the course:

DAY ONE

Explanation of Syllabus
One hour of prayer and listening to God
Corporate sharing & response

Teaching

Intro to Spiritual Formation
Keeping a Spiritual Journal
Restoration, Renewal, Formation, Transformation
One’s need for renewal and transformation
Formation into Christlikeness
Spirituality of Howard Thurman

DAY TWO

One hour of prayer and listening to God

Corporate sharing & response
Teaching

Review
Recognition of the gap
Realization that only God can form us
Abiding in the presence of God
How to hear the voice of God
Spirituality of Howard Thurman

DAY THREE

One hour of prayer and listening to God

Corporate sharing & response

Teaching

Review
Metaphors of the spirit
Removing the false self
Ontological dualities (the “from-to” nature of spiritual transformation)
Spirituality of Martin Luther King

DAY FOUR

One hour of prayer and listening to God

Corporate sharing & response

Teaching

Review
Humility
Spiritual discernment
Practicing the presence of God – abiding in Christ
Spiritual disciplines
Spirituality and Leadership

TEXTS

Required Reading:

1) Howard Thurman, Essential Writings

2) Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline
3) Lewis Baldwin, Never to Leave Us Alone: The Prayer Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.

I will present my own lectures on Theology and Practice of Spiritual Formation. Extensive notes will be published on my website during the week of classes. (johnpiippo.com)

My annotated bibliography includes texts which have informed me on this subject. I will often point to many of these texts as examples of the material I am presenting.

Arnold, Eberhard. Inner Land: A Guide Into the Heart and Soul of the Bible (Rifton, N.Y: Plough Publishing House, 1976). A classic in Anabaptist spirituality.

Blackaby, Henry T., and King, Claude V. Experiencing God. An excellent, clearly written text that is especially good for church study.

Boyd, Greg. Satan and the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy

(IVP: 2001). An excellent study on the kingdom of God, esp. on spiritual battle and the kingdom of Satan. A coherent Christian response to the philosophical problem of evil.

Boyd. Present Perfect: Finding God In the Now. (Zondervan: 2010) This is an excellent, clearly written little book that contains some deep spiritual insights that are not found in other spirituality texts. Greg’s meditation on “death” is worth the price of the book.

Buechner, Frederick. Godric (New York: Harper and Row, 1980). A beautiful novel, spiritually deep and uplifting. The character of Godric reminds me of Thomas Merton.

Campolo, Tony, and Darling, Mary Albert. The God of Intimnacy and Action: Reconnecting Ancient Spiritual Practices, Evangelism, and Justice. Nicely puts together the spiritual disciplines and social activism.

Collins, Kenneth J. Exploring Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Reader (Baker Book House: 2000). An excellent one-volume text.

Costen, Melva Wilson. African American Christian Worship.

Dawn, Marva. Unfettered Hope: A Call to Faithful Living In An Affluent Society (Presbyterian Publishing Corporation: 2003). This is a deep, profound study allowing us to see our materialistic world and our spiritual place in it through God’s eyes.

Deere, Jack. Surprised By the Voice of God: How God Speaks Today Through Prophecies, Dreams, and Visions (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996). A very good, clearly written biblical and historical presentation of how one hears God speaking to them.

Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim At Tinker Creek (Harper and Row). This makes my personal top ten ever-read list. A beautiful meditation of the creation, especially its microscopic aspects.

Fee, Gordon. God’s Empowering Presence (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994). This massive text is, arguably, the definitive statement of the apostle Paul’s spirituality. A detailed study of every Pauline reference to the Holy Spirit.

Fee. The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987). Superb, meditative, scholarly commentary on what it means to be pneumatikos (“spiritual”).

Felder, Cain Hope. Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation. (Augsburg: 1991) This edited collection does an excellent job distinguishing the Eurocentric bias in biblical hermeneutics from an African American perspective which gives place to the now-experiential reality of God’s Spirit speaking to us through the written text.

Foster, Richard. A Celebration of Discipline (San Francisco: Harper and Row). The modern classic on the spiritual disciplines. If you have not yet read this it should be one of your choices.

Foster. Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home (Harper and Row: 1992). Examines several different types of prayer that are both biblically and historically Christian.

Foster. Life With God: Reading the Bible for Spiritual Transformation. (HarperOne: 2010)

Foster. Longing for God: Seven Paths of Spiritual Devotion. (Intervarsity Press: 2009)

Foster, and Griffin, Emilie. Spiritual Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups on the Twelve Spiritual Disciplines (Harper and Row: Feb. 2000). A very good collection representing the great Christian types of spirituality.

Foster. Streams of Living Water: Celebrating the Great Traditions of Christian Faith (Harper and Row: 1998). On the following traditions: contemplative, holiness, charismatic, social justice, evangelical, and incarnational.

Gutierrez, Gustavo. We Drink From Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1988). Excellent, especially in its emphasis on corporate spirituality.

Holmes, Urban T. Spirituality for Ministry. Still one of the best books on this subject.

Jones, Cheslyn, et. al., eds. The Study of Spirituality (New York: Oxford, 1986). A very good one-volume source on the history of Christian spirituality.

Kelleman, Robert, and Edwards, Karole A. Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. (Baker: 2007)

Kelly, Thomas. A Testament Of Devotion (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1941). This brilliant, provocative little text makes my top ten ever-read books on Christian spirituality. A modern classic.

Kraft, Charles. Christianity With Power: Your Worldview and Understanding of the Supernatural (Ann Arbor, Mi.: Servant, 1989). A brilliant study in paradigm theology by an anthropologist and missiologist at Fuller Theological Seminary.

Ladd, George. The Gospel of the Kingdom: Scriptural Studies in the Kingdom of God (Eerdmans: 1959). A classic, still-used examination of the kingdom of God as both present and future. Schoalrly, but it often reads devotionally.

Leech, Kenneth. Experiencing God: Theology As Spirituality (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985). An excellent historical study, from biblical times to the present, of the experience of God.

Leech. Soul Friend: The Practice of Christian Spirituality (New York: Harper and Row, 1980). The best book available on spiritual direction.

Leech. True Prayer: An Invitation to Christian Spirituality (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980).

Lovelace, Richard. Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1979).

Lovelace. Renewal As a Way of Life: A Guidebook for Spiritual Growth (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1985).

Manning, Brennan. The Ragamuffin Gospel. A beautiful, very thoughtful meditation on the grace of God.

Manning, Abba’s Child. This book spoke deeply to me about my need for experiential knowledge of the love of God.

Manning, The Importance of Being Foolish: How to Think Like Jesus. Very good as it gets at the real Jesus.

May, Gerald. Addiction and Grace (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1991). An excellent, clearly written book with an especially helpful section on addiction to control.

May. Care of Mind, Care of Spirit: A Psychiatrist Explores Spiritual Direction (New York: Harper and Row, 1992). A very good text on the nature of spiritual direction.

May. Will and Spirit: A Contemplative Psychology (Harper and Row: 1987). An excellent text.

McManus, Erwin. The Barbarian Way: Unleash the Untamed Faith Within (Thomas Nelson: 2005) Don’t be put off by the title. I loved this book about what it means to be a real follower of Jesus.

McLaren, Brian. The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the Truth that Could Change Everything (Thomas Nelson: 2007). I loved this book about the kingdom of God.

Merton, Thomas. The Inner Experience: Notes On Contemplation (Harper: 2003). This is Merton’s final book. Few write about contemplation as well as he does.

Merton. New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1961). Merton at his best.

Merton. No Man Is an Island (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983). Contains the classic chapter, “Being and Doing.”

Merton. Seeds (Shambala: 2002). A killer collection of Merton quotes. A tremendous introduction to the depth, wisdom, and discernment of Thomas Merton. Prophetic.

Merton. The Sign of Jonas (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981). One of Merton’s journals, containing many spiritual gems,

Miller, J. Keith. A Hunger for Healing: The Twelve Steps as a Classic Model for Christian Spiritual Growth (New York: Harper and Row, 1991).

Miller. Hope In the Fast Lane: A New Look at Faith in a Compulsive World (New York: Harper and Row, 1987). An excellent text on overcoming sin in one’s life. Especially good on identifying the deep source of stress and overcoming stress.

Miller. The Secret Life of the Soul (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1997). About the vulnerability needed for the transformation of the soul.

Muse, J. Stephen, ed. Beside Still Waters: Resources for Shepherds in the Marketplace (Smyth and Helwys: 2000). An excellent text that uses Psalm 23 to speak to Christian leaders regarding spiritual issues. Very good on our need to care for ourselves physically.

Mulholland, Robert. Shaped By the Word: The Power of Scripture in Spiritual Formation (Nashville: Upper Room Press, 1985). An excellent book on how the Bible interprets us.

Nelson, Alan. Broken In the Right Place: How God Tames the Soul (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1994). A very good book on how spiritual brokenness effects personal transformation.

Nouwen, Henri. A Cry for Mercy: Prayers From the Genesee (Garden City, New York: Image, 1981). A beautiful book of prayers expressing our heart’s fears, struggles, and longings.

Nouwen. Behold the Beauty of the Lord: Praying with Icons (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1987).

Nouwen. Gracias! A Latin American Journal (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983). One of Nouwen’s spiritual journals.

Nouwen. In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership (Harper and Row). A brilliant little book, among the best I have ever read on pastoral leadership.

Nouwen. Lifesigns: Intimacy, Fecundity, and Ecstasy in Christian Perspective (New York: Image, 1986).

Nouwen. Making All Things New: An Invitation to the Spiritual Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1981).

Nouwen. Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Spiritual Life (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1980).

Nouwen. Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life (Garden City, New York: Image, 1976).

An excellent text; a modern classic. On solitude, hospitality, and prayer.

Nouwen. Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith.

Nouwen. Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit.

Nouwen. The Genesee Diary: Report From A Trappist Monastery (Garden City, New York: Image, 1976). This book makes my top ten ever-read list in terms of spiritual impact. An excellent example of journaling that is of spiritual value.

Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love (Image Books: 1999). I find it hard to express how much God used a slow, meditative reading of this book to effect changes in my life.

Nouwen. The Living Reminder: Service and Prayer in Memory of Jesus Christ (New York: Harper and Row). A tremendous book for pastors and Christian leaders.

Nouwen. The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming (New York: Image, 1992). Simply put, one of Nouwen’s best and one of my very favorites.

Nouwen. The Way of the Heart (New York: Ballantine, 1981). A beautiful, meditative little book on solitude, silence, and prayer.

Paris, Peter. The Spirituality of African Peoples.

Payne, Leanne. Listening Prayer: Learning to Hear God’s Voice and Keep a Prayer Journal (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991). A very good, well-written text on what it means to hear God’s voice.

Peterson. Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology. The first of five books in Peterson’s summary of his spiritual theology.

Quinn, Robert. Deep Change (Jossey-Bass: 1996). A very good book, written from a leadership-business perspective, on the inner transformation required to lead effectively.

Senn, Frank, ed. Protestant Spiritual Traditions (New York: Paulist, 1986). Various authors writing from the following perspectives: Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist, Puritan, Pietist, and Methodist.

Smedes, Lewis. Shame and Grace. (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1994). For me, a beautiful book on overcoming self-condemnation by a deeper understanding and experience of the grace of God.

St. Teresa of Avila. Interior Castle. (Image Books: 1972) A spiritual classic.

Thomas, Gary. Sacred Pathways (Zondervan: 2000). Very good on showing different spiritual styles and various ways persons experience God (the naturalist, sensate, traditionalist, ascetic, activist, caregiver, enthusiast, contemplative, and intellectual).

Thurman, Howard. For the Inward Journey: The Writings of Howard Thurman (Harcourt Brace: 1984). An excellent anthology of Thurman’s spiritual writings.

Thurman. Jesus and the Disinherited (Beacon: 1996). If you’re going to read one book by Thurman this is the one to read. He is brilliant, insightful, and extremely relevant for even today. There s a timelessness about Thurman’s writings.

Thurman. Howard Thurman: Essential Writings. (Orbis: 2006) Edited by Luther Smith. Smith is one of our great, if not our greatest, Thurman scholars. His introduction to Thurman’s writing is very helpful.

Thurman. Meditations of the Heart. (Beacon: 1999)

Weems, Renita. Listening for God: A Minister’s Journey Through Silence and Doubt (Simon and Schuster: 1999). An excellent reflection of the silence of God and intimacy with God.

West, Cornel, and Glaube Jr., Eddie S. African American Religious Thought: An Anthology. (Westminster John Knox: 2003)

Willard, Dallas. The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (Harper Collins: 1998). What a deep, beautiful book on the kingdom of God.

Willard. Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God (IVP: 1999)

Willard. Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ (Navpress:2002). This excellent book is all about spiritual transformation and is especially helpful in defining biblical terms like “soul,” “heart,” “spirit,” and “body.”

Willard. The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives (Harper and Row: 1988). A great book, profound, clearly written. Richard Foster called it “the book of the decade.”

Wimber, John. Power Healing (Harper and Row). An excellent, encouraging text filled with realism and hope.

Spiritual Formation & Transformation: My Method

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Spiritual Formation M.Div. students
Payne Theological Seminary
July 2011

(I am teaching Spiritual Formation at Payne Theological Seminary this week.)

SPIRITUAL FORMATION & TRANSFORMATION - MY METHOD

John Piippo

1. God is the agent of personal/spiritual transformation.

2. The Bible is the main text for my presentations on spiritual formation and transformation. Historically, this has also been the case.

3. My purpose is not to lecture to on how you can be changed into Christlikeness. It is rather to lead you into the presence of the One who does the transforming. My experience is that today's pastors need transformation more than they need to know theories of transformation. My sole concern is that, through this class, God meets you, breaks you, then renews and transforms you.

4. Transformation has a corporate dimension. For me, this is realized as we return from our solitary times with God and share with others what God has spoken to us. Such sharing is, for me, at the center of biblical koinonia ("fellowship") which is, literally, sharing what we have in common.

5. I believe that ongoing personal/spiritual formation and transformation necessarily undergirds all meaningful, lasting, and God-relevant congregational, socio-cultural, and global transformation.

6. My presentations grow out of my own intense, focused, disciplined times spent in the presence of God in prayer, meditation, and listening. God has changed me and continues to do so. I report to you observations on how this happens. My experience is not unique, but rather fits into certain major Christian historical expressions of spiritual transformation.

7. I draw on my corporate experience as a teacher and spiritual coach, having read and responded to the spiritual journals of over 1000 Christian pastors and leaders.

8. I have taught the history of Christian spirituality in a variety of contexts, to include theological seminaries.

9. To summarize: I am informed by 1) Scripture; 2) personal experience; 3) my teaching on spirituality and coaching many people; and 4) academic writings and spiritual biographies and autobiographies on this theme.

The Chance of a Lifetime

2012-01-14T08:21:00.000-05:00

"The spiritual life, therefore, is not a life that offers a few good moments between the many bad ones, but an abundant life that transforms all moments of time into windows through which the invisible becomes visible." (Henri Nouwen, Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit, p. 10).

"Time" is experienced differently when life is lived in the presence of God. The person who dwells in Christ not only sees and hears differently, but experiences time as kairos more than as mere chronos. One savors the present moment as God-saturated. Conversely, life lived out of the presence of God awaits some future clock-time-moment when God arrives on the scene.

Nouwen writes: "Once we discover that writing letters, attending classes, visiting friends, cooking food, and even doing the dishes are not a series of random activities but contain within themselves the transforming power of re-creation, we move from time lived as chronos to time lived as kairos (right time, the real moment, the opportunity for change, the chance of a lifetime). When our time becomes kairos, endless new possibilities and opportunities open up to our vision." (p. 9)

I sip this cup of coffee, savoring the taste. I type these words, now. In a few moments I will make Linda dinner, and we will watch a movie together. In all this I am not just "passing time" until God does something "huge" in my life. My eyes are not on some distant place where God is now moving. Christ, the hope of glory, dwells in me!

Therefore: This is the moment of salvation; the chance of a lifetime.

Joy!

2012-01-13T19:27:00.000-05:00

When you know what your purpose is in life,

and you live in fulfillment of it,

your life will be meaningful,

and your experience shall be joy.

- S.B.

January 13, 2012

A Willingness to Lay Aside Personal Freedoms to Follow Jesus' Commands

2012-01-13T12:49:00.000-05:00

I am now reading the spiritual journal of my Chinese seminary students. She is meditating on John ch. 14.

She writes:

"Jesus said, “If you love me, then obey my commands.” This reminds me of when I returned back to Taiwan. My father was in the habit of going to sleep early. He would command me to be home before 9pm so he may sleep peacefully. The nightlife in Taiwan is always very exciting, and very few people return home before 9pm. Even though I know that his rule isn’t very fair, because I love my father I am willing to give up my personal freedom to follow his command."

Desiring the Real Jesus

2012-01-13T07:27:00.000-05:00

Window, in Detroit's Orchestra Hall

One of my former philosophy students (J.V.) asks: "I am curious to understand what you mean when you say "The REAL Jesus." Could you tell me about it?"

Here's how I think about this.

For 40 years I have been studying about Jesus of Nazareth. I've been engaging in "historical Jesus" studies. My studies really got focused in my Ph.D program, as I did a qualifying exam on ancient Christology and my dissertation on metaphor theory and New Testament theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg's idea of "resurrection" as a metaphorical way to speak of an historical reality.
As a "Christ-ian" and Jesus-follower, and as one who once cried out to Jesus to rescue me and then actually got rescued, I've devoted my life to knowing about Christ, and knowing Christ.
But the historical Jesus gets buried under the layers of culture. Thus we have, e.g., an "American Jesus." I'm not interested in that, except as it tells me some things about our culture and religion. So, e.g., what little "Christian TV" I've watched in days past contains much misleading stuff on Jesus, such as the "Prosperity Gospel Jesus," which, as far as I can tell, is nothing like the Jesus of, e.g., Matthew 25 (and elsewhere).
I am interested in studies such as my friend Craig Keener's The Historical Jesus of the Gospels. Texts like this, among other things, peel away the layers of cultural accretion to expose the Jesus of history. I have a large stack of books devoted to doing this. For a good mini-book on this by a great New Testament scholar, see Richard Bauckham's Jesus: A Very Short Introduction. For a longer read see Bauckham's wonderful, scholarly Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony.
The "Real Jesus" is, thereby: 1) the Jesus who walked the earth in the early first century, was crucified, buried in a tomb, and was raised from the dead; and 2) the Messiah ("Christ") who now lives, within and without us.
Strategy: 1) read New Testament scholars on #1. Just as, if one wanted to study brain surgery, one should read texts written by brain surgeons, so in studying Jesus one should read the works of New Testament scholars who know the original languages, who know the socio-rhetorical environment of the time, and who know the socio-cultural environment of the time; 2) abide in Christ (John 14-15-16) both individually and corporately.

Want to do Real Jesus studies? I suggest the following authors, texts, and websites.

Richard Bauckham - Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony; Jesus: A Very Short Introduction

Craig Blomberg - Jesus and the Gospels

Greg Boyd - Jesus Legend, The: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition; Cynic Sage or Son of God? (Once when I was in Craig Keener's office, and asked him what books are good on the Real Jesus, he pulled this off his shelf and said, "This is a good book.")

Craig Evans - Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels

Gordon Fee - Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study

R.T. France - The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary of the Greek Text

Joel Green - The Gospel of Luke

Larry Hurtado - Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity

Craig Keener - The Historical Jesus of the Gospels; The Gospel of John, Volume One & Volume Two; The Gospel of Matthew

Andreas Kostenberger - Encountering John: The Gospel in Historical, Literary, and Theological Perspective

Scot McKnight - The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited;

Michael McLymond - Familiar Stranger: An Introduction to Jesus of Nazareth (Craig Keener told me this was a good book.)

Ben Witherington - The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth; What Have They Done with Jesus?: Beyond Strange Theories and Bad History--Why We Can Trust the Bible

N.T. Wright - See Wright's "For Everyone" commentaries; Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters; Jesus and the Victory of God

This would be good for starters. (Any more suggestions, anyone?)

And, of course, read the New Testament for your own self. Begin with the 4 Gospels. Read them as if for the very first time. Take notes. Pay attention. See how and why the Real Jesus was either embraced or despised.

Needed: Old Testament background; Second Temple Judaism background

The Glory of Reconciliation and the Hell of Alienation

2012-01-12T23:08:00.000-05:00

South Sudan

I have seen people reconciled to God, and to one another. Nothing, to me, is more beautiful.

Linda and I watched "The Color Purple" tonight. It just finished. I have tears in my eyes.

The most glorious and impactful scene of reconciliation happens at the movie's end, where the prostitute Shug is embraced by her father who pastors a church. At this point in the movie God is telling all kinds of people something, and they are listening. This is followed by one of the great reunion scenes in filmdom, where the long-exiled sisters Celie and Hattie see each other, and Celie sees her children for the first time since they were infants. We are right here at the heart of the gospel and the kingdom of heaven. This, for me, represents why I follow Jesus.

The movie is over, and I am satieted. I go to nytimes.com and read "Born in Unity, South Sudan Is Torn Again."

I've been following Sudan from afar ever since I was in Kenya a little over a year ago. I was then told of the impending split of Sudan into two nations, Sudan and South Sudan. Danger and fear and hope were in the air. Mostly fear, from those I talked to. (Imagine being Kenya today, with South Sudan to the north and Somalia to the east?)

Then it happened - in July 2011 - a new nation was birthed. There was momentary jubilation.

Now, we have unreconciled hell on earth, the antithesis of the Gospel of the Kingdom.

The article begins...

"The trail of corpses begins about 300 yards from the corrugated metal gate of the United Nations compound and stretches for miles into the bush."

"There is an old man on his back, a young woman with her legs splayed and skirt bunched up around her hips, and a whole family — man, woman, two children — all facedown in the swamp grass, executed together. How many hundreds are scattered across the savannah, nobody really knows."

"Eight thousand fighters just besieged this small town in the middle of a vast expanse, razing huts, burning granaries, stealing tens of thousands of cows and methodically killing hundreds, possibly thousands, of men, women and children hiding in the bush.

The raiders had even broadcast their massacre plans.

“We have decided to invade Murleland and wipe out the entire Murle tribe on the face of the earth,” the attackers, from a rival ethnic group, the Nuer, warned in a public statement."

"The attack was presaged by a fund-raising drive for the Nuer militia in the United States — a troubling sign that behind the raiders toting Kalashnikovs and singing war songs was an active back office half a world away. Gai Bol Thong, a Nuer refugee in Seattle who helped write the militia’s statement, said he had led an effort to cobble together about $45,000 from South Sudanese living abroad for the warriors’ food and medicine.

“We mean what we say,” he said in an interview. “We kill everybody. We are tired of them.” (He later scaled back and said he meant they would kill Murle warriors, not civilians.)"

This war is about ethnic divisions, and "ethnic cleansing."

In Christ there are no ethic divisions. God is trying to tell people something, but people are not listening.

Furious Love Event Trailer (& the 22-hour DVDs available for purchase)

2012-01-12T14:41:00.001-05:00

Last April we had the "Furious Love Event" here at Redeemer.

Now, the 22-hour dvd (!!!) is available for purchase here.

3 days.

9 speakers.

The presence of God.

Kant's Objection to the Ontological Argument

2012-01-12T13:47:00.000-05:00

(For my MCCC Philosophy of Religion students.)

Oral exam question #3: explain Kant's criticism of the Ontological Argument.

Here are the bullet points.

1. Kant says "exists" (or "being") is not a real predicate.
2. A real predicate adds something to the concept of the subject.
3. In a subject-predicate statement, "exists" is the "copula" that connects subject and predicate.
4. If "exists" were a real predicate then we would have the absurd situation that "the real contains more than the merely possible."
5. Anselm's Ontological Argument fails because it depends on "actual existence" being a real predicate that adds something to the concept of the subject "God."
6. State Norman Malcolm's response to Kant re. "necessary existence."

Kant’s criticism of the Ontological Argument is that "exists," or "existence," is not a "predicate." By "predicate" we mean "attribute," or "quality."

Anselm's version of the Ontological Argument depends on "existence" being a "great-making attribute." But if "existence" is not an attribute at all, then Anselm's argument seems to fail. This is Kant's criticism. "Exists," Kant says, "is not a predicate."

Consider the form of a subject-predicate statement: S is p. 'S' denotes the subject, 'p' denotes the predicate. For example, John's car is red. "Red" is the predicate, or attribute, of the subject "John's car." "Redness" is predicated of "John's car." Or: "redness" is an attribute of "John's car."

In the statement John's car is red, where do we find "existence?" "Exists" is found, says Kant, in the verb "is." "Is" is the "copula" (connector) that connects subject and predicate. The verb "is," in the statement John's car is red, simply posits the existence of John's red car. And, this adds nothing to our concept (idea) of the subject.

Kant writes: "'Being' is obviously not a real predicate; that is, it is not a concept of something which could be added to the concept of a thing. It is merely the positing of a thing, or of certain determinations, as existing in themselves. Logically, it is merely the copula of a judgment."

What does that mean? Here is an example to illustrate that "exists" (or "being," "is-ness") is not a real attribute or predicate.

Consider this. I'm going to tell you some things about my wife Linda. I'll do this by making a series of subject-predicate statements, predicating attributes of the subject "My wife Linda."

My wife Linda is 5'6" tall.
My wife Linda has long brown hair.
My wife Linda is a sushi-lover.
My wife Linda is a piano teacher.

All of these predicates add something to the concept "My wife Linda." But consider this:

My wife Linda exists.

That adds nothing to the subject "My wife Linda." Actually, it functions more like a tautology: My existing wife Linda has the attribute of existence. That statement is tautological (redundant), which means the predicate simply repeats the subject.

Try this.

You go for a job interview. The interviewer asks you to describe yourself, which is another way of listing your attributes. You respond:

I have computer skills.
I graduated from Harvard.
I have worked for Steve Jobs as his personal assistant.
I invented the iPhone.

The interviewer, his eyes wide open and jaw dropping to the floor, is amazed! Probably, he wants to hire you. But then you open your mouth and say...

"Here's one more thing about myself, one more attribute I have that I want to share with you: I exist."

That was a bad move. Because "exists" is not an attribute. And you just lost the job.

Kant further explains this by saying, "The real contains no more than the merely possible." But if "exists" was a real predicate, then the real would contain more than the possible, but that is absurd.

You say to me, “Please go to the bank and withdraw a hundred dollars.” That is, you have in your mind the idea of one hundred dollars. I go to the bank with that idea in mind and make the withdrawal. But upon making the withdrawal I now have, instead of an idea of a hundred dollars in my mind, an actually existing one hundred dollars in my hand.

Is the concept of a hundred dollars in my mind any different than the actual hundred dollars in my hand? If you answer “Yes,” then is it because the hundred dollars in my hand actually exists? In other words, is “existence” a predicate of the hundred dollars I hold in my hand? If you say “Yes” to this, then the hundred dollars in my hand is different than the hundred dollars in your mind. I will have withdrawn from the bank something different than what you asked me to withdraw. I withdrew something that has an extra “predicate” which your idea did not have.

You are thinking of $100. If we then add that the $100 "exists," in asserting that it exists we add nothing to the concept of the $100. The $100 is the same whether it exists or not; it is the same size, the same weight, the same colour, the same value, etc. The fact that the $100 exists, that the concept-of-$100-in-the-mind is exemplified in the world, does not change anything about the concept-of-$100. Therefore “existence” is not a real, or first-order, predicate.

A real predicate adds something to the concept, which is the subject of the judgment. If the actual $100 has a predicate (“existence”) which the idea of $100 does not have, then they are not the same thing. And the thing I withdrew was not what you had in mind. Which seems absurd. I don't wish to say "Here is the $100 you were thinking about but it has the extra attribute of "existence."

Kant writes:

"A hundred real dollars do not contain the least coin more than a hundred possible dollars. For as the latter signify the concept, and the former the object and the positing of the object, should the former contain more than the latter, my concept would not, in that case, express the whole object, and would not therefore be an adequate concept of it. My financial position is, however, affected very differently by a hundred real dollars than it is by the mere concept of them (that is, of their possibility). For the object, as it actually exists, is not analytically contained in my concept, but is added to my concept (which is a determination of my state) synthetically; and yet the conceived hundred dollars are not themselves in the least increased through thus acquiring existence outside my concept. . . ."

(By "analytically contained" Kant means a predicate that adds nothing to the concept of the subject, such as in the statement: John the bachelor is not married. A "synthetic" judgment contains a predicate that adds something to the subject, because it is not analytically contained in the subject, such as: John the bachelor is 99 years old.)

Therefore existence is not a predicate. It merely posits the existence of the concept in mind. As Kant puts it, a hundred real dollars contains as much as a hundred imaginary dollars. "The real contains no more than the possible."

For Kant to say that something "exists" is to say that the concept of that thing is exemplified in the world. Existence, then, is not a matter of a thing possessing a property, "existence," but of a concept corresponding to something in the world.

Anselm's version of the Ontological Argument, at this point, seems to fail.

Kant writes of this in his Critique of Pure Reason. The relevant passage is found here.

Even a Snow Blower Needs Hope

2012-01-12T10:28:00.001-05:00

"I blow snow,
therefore I am."
(Snowitgo, ergo sum.)
- S.B., January 2012

My snow blower (S.B.) heard today's weather forecast, rolled out of the garage, and has been staring at the sky ever since. Why? Because...

...S.B. is a philosophical Essentialist, not an Existentialist. On Existentialism "existence precedes essence." The idea here is that we are first "thrown" into the world (Geworfenheit; Heidegger's "thrownness"), and only afterwards make our own essence. But S.B., the diehard Essentialist, believes she was created for One Thing and One Thing only (essence precedes existence); viz., to blow snow. Is there anything sadder in life than to live with this expectation deferred?

When S.B. heard of the promise of snow, hope rose in her engine.

"Hope" = the expectation, felt as an emotion, that a promise given to us is going to be fulfilled.

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But desire fulfilled is a tree of life." (Proverbs 13:12)

S.B. awaits fulfillment of her life's desire, her raison d'etre, the tree of life.

Monroe Weather Forecast, Jan. 12, 2012

Today

Light rain likely through mid afternoon...then light rain likely and a chance of light snow late. Cloudy. Highs 41 to 45. Southwest winds 10 to 20 mph. Chance of precipitation 70 percent.

Tonight

Breezy...cloudy. Snow and rain in the evening...then snow after midnight. Accumulations 1 to 2 inches. Lows 24 to 28. Southwest winds 15 to 25 mph...becoming west 20 to 30 mph after midnight. Chance of precipitation 80 percent.

Friday

Breezy. Cloudy with periods of snow showers. Accumulations 1 to 2 inches. Highs 28 to 32. West winds 20 to 30 mph. Chance of snow 90 percent.

Friday Night

Mostly cloudy with a chance of light snow showers. Lows 18 to 22. Northwest winds 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 50 percent.

(For more on S.B. see here, here, and here.)

Real Jesus-Followers Boast of Their Weaknesses

2012-01-11T12:48:00.000-05:00

Last winter, when the snow fell.

This coming Sunday morning at Redeemer I'm preaching out of 2 Corinthians 11:16-33.

First, a heads-up. To understand this passage you need to understand the ancient corona muralis. I'll explain and apply it this Sunday. N.T. Wright says “This is the only possible explanation of why Paul tells the story of his escape from Damascus in verses 32 and 33, and why he precedes this story with a solemn oath that the God and father of the Lord Jesus knows he isn’t lying.” (126. See also Ben Witherington, 458-459)

One of the commentaries I'm reading on 2 Corinthians is Sam Storms's A Sincere and Pure Devotion to Christ. Sam cites three final reflections on this passage by D.A. Carson, which are beautiful and helpful. Carson writes:

First – Jesus-followers “ought to be greatly ashamed of boasting about strengths, skills, victories, training, successes, and productivity in their lives as if, on the one hand, we either earned these things or deserved them, or as if, on the other, such things make us intrinsically more acceptable to the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Second, Jesus-followers “ought to be quick to admit their weaknesses, because rightly handled our weaknesses will serve to extol Christ’s strength and therefore bring glory to him.”

Note: some say leaders should hide their weaknesses. Incorrect. Paul openly parades his weaknesses and failures in front of us, “boasting” of them. Note 2: The key here is appropriate and voluntary transparency. If you are a pastor and a closet ax-murderer I suggest that you not confess this to your people this coming Sunday. Tell your leaders, and get help.

Third, Jesus-followers “must not uncritically drag over from the world criteria of self-assessment whose underlying values actually betray biblical discipleship to Jesus Christ.”

Very nice. And thank you God that you've brought leaders like that into my life.

Advice to a Young Philosopher

2012-01-11T10:28:00.000-05:00

My snowblower, waiting for me to
show up and read a letter to her.

One of my MCCC philosophy students is considering getting her Bachelor's degree in Philosophy. She's asked me what opportunities there might be for someone with a Philosophy degree.

Here's my response to her.

Hi ______ - I'm so glad you are in my Philosophy of Religion class.

I suggest that you call a university philosophy department, such as U-Michigan or U-Toledo . Ask them: What do your philosophy graduates do after they graduate? What opportunities are there for them? Most departments track their graduates.

Here are some thoughts I have.

Philosophy graduates learn important life and job skills, like how to think critically, and how to think logically. You might consider taking my Logic class at MCCC in the fall.

Some philosophy graduates go on for a Master's or Ph.D. These degrees allow them to teach, e.g., at community colleges and universities. I think there are a few high schools across the nation that offer courses in philosophy.

You could do a major in Ed. and a minor in philosophy - I've seem some students do that.

Another very interesting area that is growing is the Philosophical Counseling movement. See here, e.g.

If you want to get together sometime and talk more, or talk more on the phone, let me know.

Blessings!

A Letter to My Snowblower

2012-01-10T16:20:00.000-05:00

A week ago my snow-deprived snowblower (S.B.) wrote me a troubled letter, which I posted here.

My response was to connect S.B. with a Grief/Recovery Support Group, shown here.

Then, a few days ago, a letter came, addressed to me, but for both myself and S.B. It was from our friend Gloria Evans, who lives in Sioux Falls, S.D., one of the snowiest places in North America. Except for this year.

Gloria is also an author, and expresses things well. So today I decided to sit down with S.B. and read her the letter. I think it helped.

It's entitled: "Thinking of You"

Teri told me about your Snowblower and, of course,

I read about this tragedy on your blog. It is so sad

that your blower is in such grief while the rest of

us are rejoicing over the lack of snow. But God is

so good. If he watches over the birds who suffer

so in the winter cold, surely he will watch over your

Blower and all the little Shovels during this barren

winter.

Please extend my sympathy to this one who has

worked so hard to help make your work easier in

times of stress. How grateful you must be for

that strength in those times of need! Perhaps you

can help by anointing his wheels with a little oil

to keep the rust at bay. Maybe a little stroll along

the old snow covered path...now so bare...will bring

cheer to you both. And there is always hope......

hope for a snowy tomorrow.

I trust that you and Linda are well and that somehow

you will find joy in this bleak winter in spite of the

misfortune of this one so dear to you.

Love to you both. Gloria

Introducing Students to the Subjectivist Fallacy

2012-01-10T15:09:00.000-05:00

Last winter in Monroe

In my MCCC philosophy classes I am introducing students to, among other things, the "subjectivist fallacy." Viz., to the idee of "subjective truth." This is a hard concept for students to grasp, since they have been baby-boomed into being subjective relativists.

The subjectivist fallacy makes its appearance in statements like this: "X is true for me, but not for you." Or, for me it is true that X, but for you it is not true that X." Nonsense. Because if something, anything, is true, it is true for everyone past, present, and future.

But what if I like Coke better than Pepsi, and Linda likes Pepsi better than Coke (which she does)? No matter. Consider the statement (a statement is a sentence that is either true or false, that either affirmds that a certain state of affairs obtains or does not obtain) John likes Coke better than Pepsi. That is a statement. If it is true, it is true for everyone; if false, it is false for everyone. If it's true, than what is it that is true? This is: John likes Coke better than Pepsi. What this statement is not claiming is that Coke is better than Pepsi. That's an entirely different claim, and one that seems much harder to logically arrive at.

In logic, and in all philosophy that affirms logic, there are no such things as "true for me" or "false for you" or vice versa. I am now typing on my laptop. That is true. For all (though this surely is a trivial truth).

The logic text I use is Lewis Vaughn's The Power of Critical Thinking: Effective Reasoning About Ordinary and Extraordinary Claims. Vaughn exposes and debunks the subjectivist fallacy on pp. 50-51. Pay attention.

"The truth of a claim does not depend on what a person thinks." (Such, as e.g., John thinks Coke is better than Pepsi.) "That is, your believing that something is true does not make it true."
'The idea that truth depends on what someone believes is called subjective relativism, and if you accept this notion or use it to try to support a claim, you're said to commit the subjectivist fallacy. This view says that truth depends not on the way things are but solely on what someone believes. Truth, in other words, is relative to persons. Truth is a matter of what a person believes - not a matter of how the world is."
"You've probably encountered subjective relativism more often than you realize. You may have heard someone (maybe even yourself!) say, "This is my truth, and that's your truth," or, "This statement is true for me."
Logic, and critical thinking, on the other hand, "is about determining whether statements are true or false. But if we can make a statement true or false just by believing it to be true, then critical thinking would seem to be unnecessary."
Critical thinking is used "to find out whether a statement is true or false - objectively true or false." Which mean, if a statement is true, it is true for everybody, and if it is false, it is flase for everybody." Consider the statement Hindus believe there are 330,000,000 gods/avatars. That statement is true, and can be argued for sociologically. But philosophers are more interested in the statement There are 330,000,000 gods/avatars. If that statement is true, it is true for everyone, theists and atheists alike. If it is false, it is false for everyone, even though Hindus believe it to be true.
Yes, some things about ourselves "are relative because they are one way for us and another way for someone else." You may like Coke, but someone else may not. Your liking of Coke is then relative to you. "But the truth about these states of affairs is not relative."

Vaughn says subjective relativism is implausible for two reasons.

If we could make a statement true just by believing it to be true, we would be infallible. We could not be wrong about anything. But "personal infallibility is, of course, absurd."
Subjective relativism is self-defeating. "It defeats itself because its truth implies its falsity. The relativist says 'All truth is relative." If this statement is objectively true, then it refutes itself because if it is objectively true that 'All truth is relative, then the statement itself is an example of an objective truth. So if 'All truth is relative' is objectively true, then it is objectively false." Which is, of course, absurd.

It will be a bit of a battle trying to get this across to my students, since most are (unknowingly) subjetive relativists.

The Bat-and-Ball Puzzle, and a Discouraging Implication

2012-01-09T23:38:00.000-05:00

I'm reading Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow. He suggests persons have two "systems" of thinking, and calls them "System 1" and "System 2."

System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.

System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration. (pp. 20-21)

Kahneman gives many problems and puzzles to illustrate the operations of these two systems. Here's one that shows how many people accept the conclusion of System 1 and don't go on to utilize System 2. He writes:

"One of the main functions of System 2 is to monitor and control thoughts and actions “suggested” by System 1, allowing some to be expressed directly in behavior and suppressing or modifying others. For an example, here is a simple puzzle. Do not try to solve it but listen to your intuition:
A bat and ball cost $1.10.
The bat costs one dollar more than the ball.
How much does the ball cost?" (p. 44)

Probably, the number '10' came to your mind. The correct answer, you think, is 10 cents.

But the correct answer is actually '5' - 5 cents. System 1 thinking intuits '10,' but when people stop here and succumb to lazy thinking, they err.

Interestingly, Kahneman writes:

"Many thousands of university students have answered the bat-and-ball puzzle, and the results are shocking. More than 50% of students at Harvard, MIT, and Princeton gave the intuitive—incorrect—answer. At less selective universities, the rate of demonstrable failure to check was in excess of 80%. The bat-and-ball problem is our first encounter with an observation that will be a recurrent theme of this book: many people are overconfident, prone to place too much faith in their intuitions. They apparently find cognitive effort at least mildly unpleasant and avoid it as much as possible." (p. 45)

"This experiment has discouraging implications for reasoning in everyday life." (Ib.)

Shusaku Endo's "Silence"

2012-01-09T22:17:00.000-05:00

I'm reposting this because theistic philosopher James K.A. Smith called Shusaku Endo's Silence the best novel he read all year. Smith writes:

"Wittgenstein famously concluded his Tractatus with an injunction: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." My relationship to Endo's Silence is of that order: I'm hesitant to even try to speak about how this story affected me. It was my Lenten reading for 2011, and I'm seriously considering making it an annual discipline."

Correct.

*****
One book that might be on my Top Ten ever-read list is Silence, by Shusaku Endo. It's the story of a 17th-century Portuguese priest in Japan when Japanese persecution of Christians was horrific. I read this book back in the 1980s. Some of the scenes are forever imprinted in my mind.

The persecutions almost totally eliminated Christianity in Japan. Today, Christianity still struggles to gain a hold.

A few years ago there was a service that attracted thousands, honoring Japan's Christian martyrs.

From Reuters:

"Brought to Japan in 1549 by Francis Xavier, a Jesuit missionary active across Asia, Christianity was banned by feudal lords fearful that foreign influence would undermine their power.

A period of persecution followed, forcing the faithful to choose between martyrdom or hiding their beliefs. At least 5,500 Christians are believed to have been killed for their faith in Japan.

Others practiced their rites in secret and blended them with local beliefs, a hybrid faith that has trickled down to the present day in remote parts of southern Japan.

Less than 1 percent of Japanese are Christians and fewer than 500,000 are Catholic. Prime Minister Taro Aso is the first Catholic to become premier but he rarely refers to his religion in public and was not invited to the ceremony.

Many Japanese take a mix-and-match approach to religion, often favoring Christian-style weddings, Shinto blessings for children and Buddhist funerals.

Monday's beatification is the culmination of three decades of efforts by Japanese Catholics to recognize more of their own martyrs. The destruction of records in Japan meant researchers had to travel overseas to study letters sent home by missionaries.

Some of those beatified on Monday were crucified then burned to death, while others were beheaded or drowned. The martyrs ranged in age from one to 80. Four were priests but most were ordinary Catholics, many of whose names are still unknown."

Endo's description of how these missionaries confessed Christ in the face of such persecutions is unforgettable.

Building Addition and Prayer Room at Redeemer

2012-01-09T10:09:00.001-05:00

Yesterday morning Joe Laroy and I presented a slide show of what our proposed building extension could look like. Note: This design is not something that has been decided on. As the process moves along this will probably change. Your input (Redeemer people) is desired.

On the lower level there is a large meeting room, surrounded by classrooms, bathrooms, and a kitchenette.

Upstairs is a large room that could hold 200+ people. We envision this as a prayer room. When Angela Greenig was with us she said she saw a healing room at Redeemer.

Thanks to Joe and Jeremiah Werstein for collaborating on this!

The Glory of Selfless Freedom

2012-01-09T09:21:00.000-05:00

Monroe County

Thomas Merton confessed: "The sin of wanting to be a pontiff, of wanting to be heard, of wanting converts, disciples. Being in a cloister, I thought I did not want this. Of course I did, and everyone knows it... I have got to face the fact that there is in me a desire for survival as pontiff, prophet, and writer, and this has to be renounced before I can be myself at last." (A Year with Thomas Merton, Kindle Locations 1144-1145)

Is it wrong to desire to do great things for God? No.

Is it wrong to desire to be someone great, for the sake of one's own self? Yes.

Is it wrong to desire to be used and wielded by God so that the honor and reputation of God is increased? No. In fact, that is the point of the whole thing; that is the point of life. That is what gives life meaning.

Is it wrong to desire to be great and do great things (whatever that might mean, without God) so that one's own honor and reputation increases? Yes. Of course. These are the kind of people we do not want as our leaders, the ones who cannot be our true friends. They are the ones who use people for their own gain.

Is it wrong to desire to help the poor, hungry, homeless, and "least of these" out of our love for Jesus (Matthew 25)? No. To do that is very good.

Is it wrong to help the poor, hungry, and homeless even if one does not believe in Jesus? No. That is a good thing, a very Christlike thing.

Is it wrong to help the poor, hungry, and homeless mostly to make a name for one's own self. Yes. To do that is evil.

A free person is one who no longer loves and serves others as a cloak for the enhancement of their own reputation. When that happens, they find their true selves, which is Christ, the hope of glory, in them.

I'm running towards this freedom. I'm not yet fully free of desiring the acclaim of others. But God "guides me in paths of righteousness, for his name's sake." (Ps. 23)

I see the light and glory of this selfless freedom before me.

Our Morally Abandoned Kids

2012-01-08T22:34:00.000-05:00

Nuthatch, in my back yard

When I read Christian Smith's Soul Searching a few years ago I thought that everyone who cares about American midadolescents needs to come out of their recliners and read it.

Smith has continued his research, and some of it is summarized by David Brooks here. Results include:

How bad 18-23-year-olds are when it comes to thinking and talking about moral issues. "They just don't have the categories or vocabulary to do so."
The default setting of 18-23-ers is that morality is just a matter of "individual taste."
A common response is: "I would do what I thought made me happy or how I felt. I have no other way of knowing what to do but how I internally feel." (Yikes! Yet..., from what I see teaching at our county community college, I know this is accurate.)
Smith et. al. emphasize that young people "have not been given the resources - by schools, institutions, and families - to cultivate their moral intuitions, to think more broadly about moral obligations, to check behaviors that may be morally degrading. In this way, [Smith's] study says more about adult America than youthful America."
The youth that were interviewed were "completely untroubled by rabid consumerism." (Tis was just before the crash of 2008.)
Alisdair McIntyre wrote of this, about "emotivism - the idea that it's impossible to secure moral agreement in our culture because all judgments are based on how we feel at the moment." (Yikes... again.)
Today morals have been separated from moral sources. "People are less likely to feel embedded on a moral landscape that transcends culture."
Today, more people are led to assume that the free-floating individual is the essential moral unit. Morality was once revealed, inherited and shared, but now it's thought of as something that emerges in the privacy of your own heart." And even that is not really "thought about."

Philosophy at Monroe County Community College

2012-01-08T19:58:00.001-05:00

The Winter semester at MCCC begins tomorrow.

I'll teach two sections of my Philosophy of Religion class. I love teaching this subject! Tomorrow I introduce students to the Ontological Argument for God's existence. Such fun! And, I wish you could see the looks on their faces as they try to wrap their minds around this a priori, hyper-logical argument.

On Tuesday I begin teaching my Logic class.

The following week Jim Devries will teach for me as I travel to Payne Theological Seminary to teach Spiritual Formation.

On Friday the 20th I finish up at Payne, drive back hme to Monroe, pick up Linda, and we fly with Dan and Allie to New York City where I'll speak at Faith Bible Church on Saturday and Sunday. Then, back home the 23rd.

Grief Support Group for Snowless Victims

2012-01-07T15:24:00.000-05:00

Some of you have kindly asked about how my snow blower is doing.

Better, I hope, since it's been attending a Grief Support/Recovery Group.

Hatred

2012-01-07T08:47:00.002-05:00

False Teachers Within the Church

2012-01-06T16:45:00.000-05:00

This coming Sunday morning (1/8/12) I'll be preaching out of 2 Corinthians 11:1-15. Here we see Paul's protective nature and desire to present Jesus-followers as "virginal" to their Bridegroom, Jesus. Hence, beware persons from within (and without) the church who use the right words ("Jesus," "Spirit," "Gospel") but preach a false Jesus, a false Spirit, and a false Gospel.

What might that look like? Consider Deepak Chopra's false "Jesus," in this quote:

“I want to offer the possibility that Jesus was truly, as he proclaimed, a savior. Not the savior, not the one and only Son of God. Rather, Jesus embodied the highest level of enlightenment… Jesus spoke of the necessity to believe in him as the road to salvation, but those words were put into his mouth by followers writing decades later.”

And, in a second book "about" Jesus, Chopra writes: The “pivotal Jesus… is not a person, but a state of consciousness.”

No one should look to Chopra for any wisdom about the Real Jesus. So, beware of false ideas about Jesus. Begin by turning to the 4 gospels themselves (which, amazingly, Chopra bypasses, as he writes: "This book isn't about the Jesus found in the New Testament, but the Jesus who was left out." Welcome to the world of wild speculation.

Here's Sunday's full text:

¹ I wish that you would bear with me in a little foolishness; but ^[a]indeed you are bearing with me. ² For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. ³ But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. ⁴ For if ^[b]one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully. ⁵ For I consider myself not in the least inferior to the ^[c]most eminent apostles. ⁶ But even if I am unskilled in speech, yet I am not so in knowledge; in fact, in every way we have made this evident to you in all things.
⁷ Or did I commit a sin in humbling myself so that you might be exalted, because I preached the gospel of God to you without charge? ⁸ I robbed other churches by taking wages from them to serve you; ⁹ and when I was present with you and was in need, I was not a burden to anyone; for when the brethren came from Macedonia they fully supplied my need, and in everything I kept myself from being a burden to you, ^[d]and will continue to do so. ¹⁰ As the truth of Christ is in me, this boasting of mine will not be stopped in the regions of Achaia. ¹¹ Why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do!
¹² But what I am doing I will continue to do, so that I may cut off opportunity from those who desire an opportunity to be ^[e]regarded just as we are in the matter about which they are boasting. ¹³ For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. ¹⁴ No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. ¹⁵ Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds.

What Is Most Personal Is What Is Most Communal

2012-01-06T09:06:00.000-05:00

Woman praying in Church of the Nativity,
Jerusalem

Henri Nouwen writes:

"What is most personal proves to be most communal; what is most intimate proves to be the most public; what is most nourishing for our individual lives proves to be the best food for our lives as the people of God living in and acting on behalf of a suffering world." (Nouwen, Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit, K 318)

What does Nouwen mean by this?

For Nouwen, spiritual formation and transformation happens in the "deep waters of the human heart." (Prov. 20:5)

The deeper the Spirit goes in the human heart, the more persons are all the same.

That which is "most personal" about a person is what lies in the deep waters of their heart; in the deepest center of their being.

Since this is the place where all persons are the same, therefore what is mnost personal is most public, and most communal.

I have expressed this in terms of ontological dualities of human personhood.

From Solitude to Community, and Back Again

2012-01-05T21:31:00.000-05:00

Dan and Linda,
crossing the Stait of Bosphorus in Istanbul, Turkey

When I teach my Spiritual Formation classes I intentionally structure them in a dialectical movement from solitary prayer to small group sharing to large group sharing to solitary prayer to small group sharing to large group sharing to solitary prayer... and so on, round and round, until the time period ends with large group sharing. Always begin with solitary prayer; always end with large group sharing. It's a movement from solitude to community, then back into solitude, which leads to community, and so on.

For example, when I travel to teach this class at Payne Theological Seminary in two weeks, I will begin our first class session like this:

1) Instruct students to find a quiet place to go alone to pray, using Psalm 23 as their meditative focus. I say, "When God speak to you, write it down." (Warning: do not over-direct at this point!)
2) After an hour of alone-prayer with God, return to class. Form small groups of 3-4 people. Each person shares what God said to them. One person take notes of this sharing time.
3) After a half hour of doing this, return to class. Each note-taker shares with the entire group the bullet points of what God said to the individuals in their group. During this time, I begin teaching and coaching, and discerning what God is doing.

I've found this works well, and powerfully. The energy level of the students is very high. The sharing is electric and inspiring. We're experiencing true Christian community; authentic koinonia.

Koinonia is the biblical Greek word for "community," or "fellowship." It comes from the root word koine, which means "common." True community is formed around commonality. What I and all my seminary students have in common, in spite of our many obvious differences, is Christ, in us, the hope of glory. The experience and the sharing revolves around this, and we are all captured by it. What happens in our solitary alone-times with God gets shared in community. Many good things happen at that point.

I like the way Henri Nouwen talks about this, in his book Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit:

"Spiritual formation requires taking not only the inward journey to the heart, but also the outward journey from the heart to community and ministry. Christian spirituality is essentially communal. Spiritual formation is formation in community. One’s personal prayer life can never be understood if it is separated from community life. Prayer in the spiritual life leads to community, and community to prayer. In community we learn what it means to confess our weakness and to forgive each other. In community we discover our own woundedness, but also a place of healing. In community we learn true humility. Without community, we become individualistic and egocentric. Therefore, spiritual formation always includes formation to life in community." (K 300)

Journey inward, journey outward. Such is the Spirit's movement in authentic Jesus spirituality.

Why People Wear Masks

2012-01-05T15:27:00.001-05:00

I'm on the left,
between Holly and Linda

In one of my seminary student's spiritual journal God was speaking to them about their inauthenticity before others. They spend a lot of energy performing and acting before others, and not allowing others to see the "real them."

A few days later, in another journal entry, God began speaking to them about their "fear of man"; i.e., the fear of what others think of them or of what others might do to them. This fear of others is the root of mask-wearing inauthenticity. This is why people wear "masks," and don't let others inside of them.

The key to an authentic existence is to bring one's fear of others before God and let God get his hands on this. The way God frees people of this fear of others and brings us into authentic existence is through his love of us, as our Father. When the truth of how much and why God loves us becomes less theory and more experiential reality, authentic existence has begun.

As we discover the freedom and acceptance of unmasked relationship with God, the mask comes off before others.

Alexander Rosenberg's Attack on Village Atheism

2012-01-04T18:34:00.002-05:00

The Churchlands - famous philosophical
eliminative materialists

Alexander Rosenberg is Professor of Philosophy at Duke University and Chair of Duke's Philosophy Department. He has secondary appointments in the biology and political science departments. And, he is an atheist.

Rosenberg's recent book is The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions.

"This," writes Rosenberg in the Preface, "is a book for atheists." Here are some of the bullets, from a review found here.

On atheism, "scientism" is the case. There are no non-physical facts. Physics and evolutionary biology explain everything. I agree.
On atheism, there is no purpose to anything. Therefore, there is no meaning to life. I agree.
On atheism, there is no such thing as a soul. Of course not.
On atheism, free will does not exist. Correct again.
Real atheists need to stop arguing against theists, "because it eats into the time atheists should be taking to work through the implications of their own worldview. Atheists need to spend more time getting to grips with what they should know about the reality we inhabit because science reveals it is ‘stranger than even many atheists recognise.’" Indeed. How odd for a real atheist to waste precious time arguing against the existence of unicorns.
On atheism, there is no moral difference between good and bad, right and wrong. I agree, again.
For Rosenberg, on atheism belief in "purpose" and "free will" is just as hokum-ish as is belief in God. Yes. To assume that free will (as well as self-knowledge) is unproblematic is to underestimate the naturalistic challenge. Therefore "freethinking" naturalism is bogus.
Nietzsche correctly guessed this kind of scientism-on-atheism, without knowing the science. Yes. Much of current atheistic naturalism was born out of Nietzsche's inspired guesses.
Rosenberg argues for a naturalism of reductive physicalism.
"Reality" is only bosons and fermions.
Intentionality, meaningfulness, free will, values... can all be ultimately reduced to fermions and bosons. This is eliminative materialism. I have for a long time thought that, on atheism, this logically follows.
"House trained nihilism" is also reductively eliminated, on real atheism. There are no "brave intellectual heroes" who have boldly proclaimed the death of God. This is part of the "hocus pocus" that needs to be eliminated. Nietzsche-wise, Rosenberg shows how deep are the roots of a village atheism still unconsciously indebted to Christian theism.
On atheism, at bottom everything is pure blind cause and effect. Uh-huh.
On atheism, "there are no plans, no decisions, no choices, no meaningful lives really." Yup.
On atheism, there is no propositional or sentential reality. Yes.
For Rosenberg, the atheist does not have to be a nihilist. Or, if she is, she can be a "nice nihilist." "Nice nihilism implies that attributing meaning to our lives is just an introspective illusion selected by blind evolutionary processes, caused by photons and fermions blindly operating, working in real time in our brains, that has helped us survive. We attach meaning by these determined operations in our brain which give the illusion that there are actual purposes. But there are no such things. As I said, the illusion is explained by natural selection: it has been heavily selected for so that everyone is within two standard deviations of the mean of a happy normal life – the fun life – in the biosphere we find ourselves in. We flourish, or rather, have fun, because we are naturally selected to do so."
On atheism there are no Kantian categorical imperatives. We have no "duty." But doesn't this mean there is nothing in atheistic naturalism to underwrite goodness, and thus there is no difference between a Hitler and a Gandhi? Rosenberg answers: That is correct. And, again, I agree. "Rosenberg accepts this but says we shouldn’t worry. Rosenberg says we are all just hard-wired to be nice. Morals are for him a type of norm expressivism."
But..., "If there is no freewill, no actual dessert, then why should we not revert to a Hobbesian state of nature? Doesn’t this imply anarchy?" Rosenberg says: No. "This because he says the state of nature isn’t as Hobbes describes it. Darwinean natural selection has selected for coordination, cooperation, empathy, love and those dispositions that extend what Paul Bloom in Descartes’ Baby calls a ‘moral circle.’ Evolution has selected the illusions that recognise our fates are yoked to living with others harmoniously." On evolutionary naturalism we are not inhernetly aggressive or competitive. Note: I'm not sure of this. For Rosenberg, evolutionary naturalism has selected for sociability. Yes it's just an isntinct, and therefore an illusion, but it's way too powerful and cannot be overridden.

What do I think?

I think Rosenberg has the logic of atheism right. I am not an atheist. But were I, I'd walk arm in arm with Nietzsche and him.

I think he has problems when it comes to telling us how we should live or, in his case, how we will live, instinctively. This is the point where Bertrand Russell had problems after describing so eloquently the absurdity of existence on the non-existence of God. And where an A.C. Grayling also becomes hard to understand, for the same reasons. Actually, I think Rosenberg is to be applauded over the likes of Russell and Grayling in his argument that we will "have fun because we are naturally selected to do so." And of course, that being the case, no one gets any credit for anything.

Charisma Magazine on Homosexuality

2012-01-04T11:38:00.000-05:00

I like Richie Hughes' "Out, But Not Disqualified" in charismamag.com.

Get Off the Internet and Take a Stroll

2012-01-04T10:58:00.000-05:00

Linda, in Boston

"I did the best thinking of my life on leisurely walks with Amos [Tversky]." Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, p. 40)

Consider those words, written by one of our greatest thinkers and scholars of the mental life, Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman. Begin slow-walking through life. This is essential for anyone who wants to think creatively and outside the box. Get off the creativity-quenching Internet and take a stroll.

Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow is on everyone's "Best Books of 2011" list. His "System I" and "System II" will be with us for a long time.

Kahneman: "I describe mental life by the metaphor of two agents, called System 1 and System 2, which respectively produce fast and slow thinking. I speak of the features of intuitive and deliberate thought as if they were traits and dispositions of two characters in your mind. In the picture that emerges from recent research, the intuitive System 1 is more influential than your experience tells you, and it is the secret author of many of the choices and judgments you make." (p. 13)

"System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.
System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration." (pp. 20-21)

This is such a good book - always brilliant, suggestive, and at times very funny.

A Letter From My Snowblower

2012-01-03T17:30:00.002-05:00

My snowblower, sitting on our sidewalk
Photo taken Jan. 3, 2012

(I just looked outside, saw my snowblower sitting on our sidewalk, looking to the skies, and praying for snow. This letter was attached to it.)

Dear John:

Remember me? I am your snowblower. I haven't seen you since last March.

I miss you.

We used to spend so much time together. What's happened, John? Have I angered you? Have you found someone else?

I am lonely.

What's going on? I thought this was Michigan! So where's all the snow? What's the deal with all this sun? And "rain," which is simply unfulfilled snow?

I feel angry.

Without snow I am nothing. Without snow my existence has no purpose.

I've started to read Richard Dawkins.

John, I've become the laughing stock of the garage. Yesterday the lawn mowers were mocking me. I have become Job, and acquired his "comforters."

I am a character in Beckett's "Waiting For a Snow."

I'm losing my faith. I question whether "snow" even exists.

I would end it all, if not for these comforting words of Sartre: “The absurd man will not commit suicide; he wants to live, without relinquishing any of his certainty, without a future, without hope, without illusions … and without resignation either. He stares at death with passionate attention and this fascination liberates him."

Substitute 'snowblower' for 'man' and I think you'll get the point.

I've left the garage with its many nihilistic voices and am sitting on the very sidewalk that I've cleaned so many times before.

If you get this note come and start me. We can pretend as if these were the good old days.

Please don't put me back in the garage, or worse yet, in the summer shed.

Your servant,

S.B.

You Can't Get Spiritual Formation Out of a Book

2012-01-03T14:07:00.003-05:00

Studying the spiritual life with God “must not begin with tradition or systems formulated in books, but with open minded exploration of living human experience.”

- Henri Nouwen, Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit

The Inner "Mysterium Tremendum"

2012-01-03T14:00:00.000-05:00

Art by Gary Wilson

Henri Nouwen writes:

"Spiritual formation requires taking an inward journey to the heart. Although this journey takes place in community and leads to service, the first task in to look within, reflect on our daily life, and seek God and God’s activity right there. People who dare to look inward are faced with a new and often dramatic challenge: they must come to terms with the inner mysterium tremendum—the overwhelming nature of the inner life." (Nouwen, Henri, Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit, K 195)

"Mysterium tremendum." I first encountered this term in Rudolf Otto's classic The Idea of the Holy. "Mysterium tremendum" (MT) refers to an experience of awe, even fearfulness, in the encounter with God.

MT is, for Otto, a non-rational (= non-discursive) experience. "Non-rational" does not mean "irrational," but rather an experience that cannot be captured in the steel nets of logical language. It cannot be discoursed about; hence it is a non-discursive experience. Put more simply, there's way more in the experience than can be captured by our intellectual reason. Surely the real encounter with the Living God has this quality.

Otto also coins the term "Numinous" to refer to the non-discursive experience of God. "Numen," for Otto, refers to God. A "numinous" experience is a way of speaking of a God-encounter that cannot be fully captured by human reason. Such experience is what Paul Ricoeur and others call a "limit-experience," which contains a "surplus of meaning." (On Ricoeur and limit-experiences see, e.g., here, p. 66)

Picking up on Otto's language, C.S. Lewis writes:

"Suppose you were told that there was a tiger in the next room: you would know that you were in danger and would probably feel fear. But if you were told "There is a ghost in the next room," and believed it, you would feel, indeed, what is often called fear, but of a different kind. It would not be based on the knowledge of danger, for no one is primarily afraid of what a ghost may do to him, but of the mere fact that it is a ghost. It is "uncanny" rather than dangerous, and the special kind of fear it excites may be called Dread. With the Uncanny one has reached the fringes of the Numinous. Now suppose that you were told simply "There is a might spirit in the room" and believed it. Your feelings would then be even less like the mere fear of danger: but the disturbance would be profound. You would feel wonder and a certain shrinking–described as awe, and the object which excites it is the Numinous. " (C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain)

Nouwen, in the quote above, uses "mysterium tremendum" metaphorically to refer to the encounter with the depths of one's own being, "the overwhelming nature of the inner life," and God and God's activity happening there. Referring to another book I read a long time ago, this is what Morton Kelsey called the "adventure inward." Call this the Journey to the Center of the Self. Entrance into the inner sanctuary, the temple within ("You are a temple of the Holy Spirit").

Here is where spiritual formation takes place. "Spiritual formation requires taking an inward journey to the heart." (Nouwen) The inward journey is dangerous and exhilarating, as much so as interstellar space travel would be. This is how those who have made the journey and lived to write about it describe it.

Today, dare to travel inward. Adventure deep, led by God's Spirit. As Nouwen guides us:

Look within.

Reflect.
Seek God and God's activity right there.

Steps 1-3 are the necessary preconditions for adventuring outward and seeing earth, through heaven.

Post-Fall-of-Man Photos

2012-01-02T18:44:00.000-05:00

Linda and I love our son Josh's sense of humor. Linda likes to decorate in our home. But sometimes Josh adds his own touch.

Linda has a doll collection. Here Josh added something, which makes it look like something Post-Fall-of- Man.

Linda also has a nutcracker collection. We saw Josh's influence this morning and laughed.

Hume's Rhetoric Against Miracles Exhumed: R.I.P.

2012-01-02T15:06:00.000-05:00

I'm doing a lot of reading today. I'm looking at more of Craig Keener's Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts.

I have never in my philosophical life read such a complete, systematic dismantling of Hume's argument against miracles. Craig, ever the gentleman, works like a meticulous, brilliant intellect-surgeon dissecting Hume's skeptical corpse to find the latter's rhetorical and illogical disease.

After reading Craig on Hume, no one will need to pay attention to Hume's "rejection" of miracles again, except as an historical study.

Craig's Hume-exhumation is book-length within his book. Humeans - read it and mourn.