Dallas Willard on Fasting

Here's some thoughts from Dallas Willard on biblical fasting. I have slightly edited them. For the full essay see here. (For my essay on "Fasting & Spiritual Warfare: Part 1," see below.

Fasting is another long proven way of finding our way into Sabbath, where we live and do our work from the hand of God. In fasting we abstain from our ordinary food to some significant degree and for some significant length of time. Like solitude and silence, it is not done to impress God or merit favor, nor because there is anything wrong with food. Rather, it is done that we may consciously experience the direct sustenance of God to our body and our whole person. We are using the keys to access the kingdom.

This understanding of fasting is clearly indicated by Jesus in Matt. 4:4 (with its back reference to Deut. 8:2-6) and in John 4:32-34. Fasting is, indeed, feasting. When we have learned well to fast, we will not suffer from it. It will bring strength and joy. We will not be miserable, and so Jesus tells us not to look miserable. (Matt 6:16) Was he suggesting that we fake a condition of joy and sufficiency when we fast? Surely not. He knew that we would "have meat to eat" that others "know not of." I and many others can report that we have repeatedly verified this in experience.

Fasting is one way of seeking and finding the actual kingdom of God present and active in our lives. And because we are then more immersed in the reality of the kingdom, practically utilizing the "keys," our lives take on the character and power of Jesus. This will assure us that our work is his work and that he is working. Though we act, and work hard, it is after all not our battle and the outcome is in his hands.

One pastor had this to say about his experience with fasting: "Surprisingly, after the fast is when I began to realize something from the fast. I came back from the fast with a clearer sense of purpose and a renewed sense of power in my ministry. The anger which I unleashed at my wife and children was less frequent and the materialism that was squeezing the life out of my spirituality had loosened its grip."

Dan Piippo in Istanbul

Today's Monroe Evening News did a story on my son Dan, who just returned toMichigan after serving two years with Campus Crusade for Christ in Istanbul, Turkey.
And when Dan arrived at Detroit MetroAirport he got down on one knee and asked Allie Miller to marry him. She said yes! Allie returned to Michigan this summer after serving for one year in Istanbul with CCC.
The picture is one I took of Dan and Allie in front of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul last January.

Now Reading...

I'm now reading George Ladd's excellent The Gospel of the Kingdom. This fall at my church I'll be teaching this on eight Sunday evenings out of this text. I began reading it this week and found I could not put it down. One reason for this is that since last September I have been preaching and teaching the 4 Gospels on Sunday mornings . And I began reading and re-reading through Matthew, Mark, Luke and John last September, and will continue doing this for at least another year. So I am immersed in Jesus-studies. I want to know Jesus, the Real Jesus. Ladd's work is extremely helpful, since Jesus' main message was "Repent, for the Kingdom of heven is near."
I also picked up John Howard Yoder's classic The Politics of Jesus, and will begin reading that very soon.

Now Teaching...

This Fall at Monroe County Community College I will be teaching two philosophy courses instead of one.
I'll teach Introduction to Logic for the sixth straight year, using Hurley's 9th edition.
I'll also teach History of Western Philosophy, using Jerry Gill's Enduring Questions.
And, for the past 5 years every winter I have taught Philosophy of Religion, using Pojman's anthology of readings, which I find to be quite good.
In all these classes my main goal is: learning. The material, especially in the Western Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion classes, is extremely difficult to read since I am using primary texts and not explanations of the texts. My task as teacher, which I love, is to take the students from no understanding of philosophy to a solid basic understanding of philosophical issues.
I rarely have one student who comes to class familiar with this material, even a little bit of it. Philosophical thinking opens up a new world of possibilities to them. It strengthens their analytic abilities. It also makes them think in new ways about God and the meaning of life.

William Wilberforce Movie

I was excited today to find out that a movie on the life of William Wilberforce is coming out. It's called "Amazing Grace: The William Wilberforce Story." It's produced by Michael Apted (Coal Miner's Daughter, Gorillas in the Mist), and opens publicly in theaters in early 2007 to coincide with the bicentennial of the abolition of the British slave trade.

Charles Colson's Misrepresentation of Greg Boyd

Charles Colson’s recent response to the New York Times article on Greg Boyd is confused in a number of ways.

First, Colson commits the fallacy of ad hominem circumstantial when he writes: “There they go again. The liberal media, it seems, likes nothing better than to play up what they see (or create) as divisions in the evangelical ranks.” Yes, the NYTimes is left-leaning. But in this case God used the NYTimes as a vehicle for a prophetic word to the Church in America. Why not? If God can speak through a donkey, why not through the liberal media? The arguable fact that the NYT is leftist does nothing logically to cause one to therefore reject Greg's biblical, prophetic message to the Church (especially the Evangelical Church) in America. Perhaps God had to speak this way precisely because the American Church has identified the Kingdom of God with the State.

Secondly, the NYTimes piece does not do full justice to Greg’s position. This should surprise no one. For the fuller story read his book The Myth of a Christian Nation. I’ve read it, and am suggesting it to others. It is, I think, a prophetic word from God to the Church in America. Here’s one reason why I think so.

My son Dan returns next week from two years serving as a missionary with Campus Crusade for Christ in Istanbul, Turkey. Linda and Josh and I went to Istanbul for 10 days in January. I’ve been studying the Turkish and Muslim culture, to include regularly reading Turkish news and editorials on the Internet. Turks are very, very suspicious of “Christian missionaries.” So much so that CCC tells its team members not to use the “M” word. Why? Because Turkish Muslims and other Muslims equate “Christianity” with “America.” But Christianity is NOT to be equated with “America," right? (To confirm this please read the original Christian documents, the 4 Gospels.) The Church in America has, sadly, created this image. Greg is absolutely correct in saying that the effect of this is not to advance the Good News of Jesus but to hinder it. I and my son have seen this firsthand.

Colson writes: “Life issues [such as abortion], you see, go to the very heart of the Gospel, which is why the first-century Church cared so passionately. And we can do no less today. The Church does not just have the right to speak about it; it has the duty to do so.” I agree. I know Greg, he spoke at my church last fall, and I’ve spoken at two conferences in the last three years where he has been the keynote speaker. Greg hates abortion. But please… the main, and passionate, message of Jesus and the early, pre-Constantinian Church was precisely: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” With Constantine the message of the Kingdom and the Church got co-opted by the State. This has NEVER been a good thing for the Real Church. The message of the Kingdom of God is subversive of all nations and is not an "arm" of the State. This is one reason that, from Constantine on, the message of the Kingdom got suppressed. (Brian McLaren is absolutely right about this.) As Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world.”

The point being: Let the message of the kingdom of God come forth from the Church, not only in America, but all around the world. The Church then will speak with a prophetic voice in its culture. This is much needed today. That was the main message of the early church. Within that main message is included the ethics of the Kingdom (abortion, and many other things). And, by the way, the answer for the world is precisely the Good News of God's Kingdom. The Church, if it aligns itself with any nation no matter how "good" it is, will necessarily diminish the real meaning of the Kingdom.

Colson writes that, in his opinion according to Greg Boyd, “we ought to abandon moral issues and adopt Boyd's position.” I find this statement incredible. It’s a false dichotomy (either agree with Greg and abandon moral issues, or reject this “propaganda” and speak out for moral issues). Sadly, this kind of thinking seriously misrepresents what Greg and others are saying. This is precisely the kind of thinking the Church does not need today.

Metaphor and Science

There’s an interesting article on metaphorical thinking in science in The Toronto Star. My dissertation at Northwestern was on metaphorical thinking and truth-speaking. I included examples of metaphor in science, and how scientific theories are, at root, inextricably metaphorical. One of my resources was Andrew Ortony’s classic Metaphor and Thought. See, e.g., Thomas Kuhn’s essay “Metaphor in Science” and other essays on metaphorical thinking and science in Ortony.

This realization, viz., that scientific theories are inextricably metaphorical, complexifies issues of truth and meaning and debunks positivistic theories of scientific truth that are indebted to non-informed, simplistic notions of such truth as “literal” (the meaning of which always remains unstated).

One problem with the Star article is that it conflates, e.g., “metaphor” with “analogy.” Metaphor is to be distinguished from “analogy,” “model,” and other tropes. “Simile” is closer to “analogy” than metaphor is. Theories of metaphor from Aristotle up to the 1960s viewed “metaphor” as only an “elliptical simile”; viz., a simile minus the word “like.” Metaphorical thinking, from Max Black onward, and especially Paul Ricoeur et. al., are careful to not reduce metaphor to simile. There are psycholinguistic studies that suggest metaphor and simile are even processed differently.

But the Star article moves in the right direction when it states that “metaphor, and its more common cousin analogy, are tools that are just as important to scientists investigating truths of the physical world as they are to poets explaining existential conundrums through verse. A scientist, one might liken, is an empirical poet; and reciprocally, a poet is a scientist of more imaginative and creative hypotheses.”

One thing this suggests is that there is not such an unbridgeable abyss between “science” and “religion,” such that science is “empirical” and religion has to do withnon-empirical “faith.”

Da Vinci Code Hits Iran

Just when we thought the Da Vinci Code hype was over today's aljazeera.net has a story called "Iranians Rush to Buy 'Da Vinci Code'." The article reads:
"Reza Mortazavi, a 32-year-old teacher, said: "I rushed to buy the book when I heard about the ban. Now, I am more eager to know what was written in it."
The ministry of culture has banned further printing and distribution of the book, which has sold about 30,000 copies in Farsi, after Christian clerics protested against it, according to Iranian media reports.
The manager of one of the book's two Iranian publishers said people were phoning him after the government's announcement to see if they could buy the book."

Why the Iranian interest in DVC? Because:

1) In Muslim Iran "Christianity" = "American values."
2) American values are to be condemned.
3) "Earlier this month, six Iranian Christian bishops condemned the book, saying it insulted their religion, and asked the Islamic government to ban publishers from printing it. Less than 0.2 percent of Iran's nearly 69 million people are Christian."
4) Anything that insults Christianity necessarily insults America.

For many Iranians (if not most), this is always a good thing.

Many if not most Muslim countries make the mistake of equating Christianity with America.

The reason for this is that American Christianity has largely taken on American culture and values and co-opted Jesus in support of "America."

More Books on Science and Religion

There's a nice article in yesterday's New York Times on the relationship between science and faith.

In The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief,” Dr. Francis Collins, the geneticist who led the American government’s effort to decipher the human genome, describes his own journey from atheism to committed Christianity, a faith he embraced as a young physician. C.S. Lewis's Mere Chrsitianity was instrumental in Collins' conversion.

The Washington Post book review of Collins' book states: "Reason persuaded him that the universe could not have created itself; that humans possess an intuitive sense of right and wrong, which he calls, following Immanuel Kant, "the Moral Law"; and that humans likewise feel a "longing for the sacred." The source of this longing, the Moral Law and the universe, he came to believe, was the God described in the Bible, a transcendent Creator, Companion, Judge and Redeemer. He found additional evidence of a Creator in the eerie ability of mathematics to map the universe and in the numerous material properties -- from the slight imbalance between matter and anti-matter in the Big Bang to the binding energy within the atomic nucleus -- that seem to have been exquisitely tuned to fashion a world that would give rise to complex forms of life."

In God’s Universe, Dr. Owen Gingerich, an emeritus professor of astronomy at Harvard, tells how he is “personally persuaded that a superintelligent Creator exists beyond and within the cosmos.” Hilary Putnam comments: "In God's Universe Owen Gingerich makes the case that the probability is miraculously minute, first, that a planet hospitable to life could form after the Big Bang and, second, that once it had formed, intelligent life could develop there. Whether one agrees or disagrees, one will learn from this beautifully presented account of the relevant astronomy and physics. But that isn't all; Gingerich's reflections (as a liberal Christian) on the theological significance of all this are sensitive and deep. A truly fascinating read."

The NYT article states that "the theory of evolution says nothing about the existence or nonexistence of God." Of course this is controversial since philosophers such as Plantinga et. al. claim that evolutionary theory strongly implies methodological naturalism.

Sub Specie Aeternitatis and Bill Johnson's Theology

Linda and I left Green Lake Conference Center this morning after an extremely rich week spent with Bill Johnson and Kris Valloton of Bethel Church in Redding, California.

Bill is the author of When Heaven Invades Earth. I found him to be an extremely effective communicator and very inspirational. I’ll spend the coming weeks processing and digesting the things God spoke to me through Bill and Kris.

Here’s, for me, the major theme of last week: as followers of Jesus we are to advance the Kingdom of God, push back the powers of darkness, heal the sick, release persons from demonic captivity, and proclaim the good news of the Kingdom. What especially allows us to do this is the reality that being truly born again spiritually transforms us from earth to heaven. We now have Christ in us, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27).

For example, when Jesus calms the storm on the lake of Galilee the reason he is calm in that storm is that, spiritually, Jesus is living in a non-earthly realm; viz., “heaven” or eternity. Medieval theologians would say tat we need to see sub specie aeternitatis, or “from the perspective of eternity. Thomas Kelly, in A Testament of Devotion (a spectacular book!), taught us to pray “see earth, through heaven.” When we, as followers of Jesus, see sub specie aeternitatis, the things of earth are seen “from heaven.” One main result of this kind of spiritual seeing is that fear of earthly consequences would be non-existent.

The medieval reference and the Kelly quote are mine, not Bill Johnson’s. My familiarity with this kind of seeing allows me to relate some historical things to Johnson’s contemporary interpretation.

Familiarity with this theme in Johnson’s theology makes sense of his approach to healing, which is: our spiritual situatedness in eternity (=, for me, dwelling in the presence of God + a variety of other biblical metaphors of spirit) is brought to bear on earthly illnesses.

I hope to take time to piece together my own understanding of such things with Bill’s approach to healing. In the meantime, I much appreciated him and Kris as persons and am thankful for their ministry, which strikes me as quite Real-Jesuslike.