Want to Discuss Calvinism With Me This Wednesday?

J.B. and I will be discussing Calvinism this Wed., June 12, 11:30 AM, at Panera Bread in Monroe.

Anyone interested is invited to join us.

We will be especially referring to William Lane Craig''s online article "5 Objections to Calvinism."

They are:

1. Universal, divine, causal determinism cannot offer a coherent interpretation of Scripture.
2. Universal causal determinism cannot be rationally affirmed.
3. Universal, divine, determinism makes God the author of sin and precludes human responsibility.
4. Universal, divine, determinism nullifies human agency.
5. Universal, divine determinism makes reality into a farce.

I have never been a Calvinist. Perhaps that's because, on becoming a Jesus-follower in 1970 at Northern Illinois University, one of my campus ministry leaders was Bill Craig. Bill, though almost as young as I was at the time, was already a brilliant philosophical thinker. I was a philosophy major. Bill was my initial mentor in theistic philosophy.

Here is a quote from Calvin's famous Institutes of the Christian Religion:

"In conformity, therefore, to the clear doctrine of the Scripture, we assert, that by an eternal and immutable counsel, God has once for all determined, both whom he would admit to salvation, and whom he would condemn to destruction. We affirm that this counsel, as far as concerns the elect, is founded on his gratuitous mercy, totally irrespective of human merit; but that to those whom he devotes to condemnation, the gate of life is closed by a just and irreprehensible, but incomprehensible, judgment. In the elect, we consider calling as an evidence of election, and justification as another token of its manifestation, till they arrive in glory, which constitutes its completion. As God seals his elect by vocation and justification, so by excluding the reprobate from the knowledge of his name and the sanctification of his Spirit, he affords an indication of the judgement that awaits them."

Calvinism is again making headlines. See, e.g.,:

"How Calvinism Is Dividing The Southern Baptist Convention," June 6, 2013, The Huffington Post

"Growing popularity of Calvinism invites discussion about predestination, gender roles," June 7, 2013, Kansas City Star

"500 years later, theological debate over Calvinism still simmers among Southern Baptists," June 7, 2013, The Washington Post

Prayer Summer An Analogy from Marriage

Tonight - A Challenge and Call to Prayer

Tonight (June 9) I will be giving A Challenge and Call to Prayer at Toledo Vineyard Church. 

Thanks so much Pastors Bill and Barb Herzog and your people for your great support in joining and helping with this!








We'll begin at 6 PM, led into God's presence by the Vineyard Worship Team.

Then, the challenge and the call.



Toledo Vineyard Church

210 E South Boundary Perrysburg OH 43551

419.874.4808

MAP

How Mercy Looks from Here

I just gave Amy Grant's new cd a listen - "How Mercy Looks from Here" - and it is beautiful.

It's so good to hear her voice. Amy was an important piece in my faith in the 70s and 80s. She became a "crossover" artist with her album "Unguarded" and got persecuted by Christians for it. How ignorant, since Jesus was a crossover artist too. Christ crossed over from heaven to earth. He came to us, rather than waiting for us to come to him.

I'm listening to one song over and over - "Deep As It Is Wide" - with Cheryl Crow and Eric Pasley. This song brings tears of joy to my eyes. Here are the lyrics.

There's a place at the edge of the sky
Where there's a love deep as it is wide
The weak are strong, the hungry are all fed
And there's a breeze from the angels flying overhead
Oh yeah

And there's a path, a glorious light
That guides you up the mountainside
And at the top, if you could you'd cry
Cause you see pure love for the very first time

Deep as it is wide

Every breath taking me closer
Every step leading to paradise
They say the faithful get to go there
I believe there's a love
Deep as it is wide

And I hear, when you get to the river
You look back for the very last time
And when you cross, you get washed off forever
Hurry up boy, eternity's on the other side

Deep as it is wide

Every breath taking me closer
Every step leading to paradise
They say the faithful get to go there
I believe there's a love
Deep as it is wide
I believe there's a love

Every nation covered [?]
Like grace pouring out, far as the eye can see
Singing praises up to a King
Cause He died, for a crown
Deep as it is wide

Every breath taking me closer
Every step leading to paradise
They say the faithful get to go there
I believe there's a love
I believe
I believe there's a love
I believe there's a love
Deep as it is wide
Deep as it is wide
Deep as it is wide

There's a place at the edge of the sky
Where there's a love deep as it is wide

Frog Weddings and Sex Slaves

Annie D. posted this on Facebook:

"Weddings for frogs and shrimp while Thailand's daughters are sold in prostitution? Speechless."

See "Mass wedding for frogs, bullfrogs in Thailand's Northeast." 
Meanwhile, here in the American world of irrationality, Ariel Castro may be prosecuted on multiple counts, including aggravated murder for purposely beating one of his women hostages who was pregnant with his child, causing her to miscarry. But in America abortion is legal. You will not be able to logically wrap your mind around this.

Prayer Summer - Finding a Lonely Place to Pray

Prayer and Stillness as the Gateway to the Source of Life (Prayer Summer)

Green Lake Conference Center, Wisconsin

Howard Thurman writes: "There is no argument needed for the necessity of taking time out for being alone, for withdrawal, for being quiet without and still within. The sheer physical necessity is urgent because the body and the entire nervous system cry out for the healing waters of silence. One could not begin the cultivation of the prayer life at a more practical point than deliberately to seek each day, and several times a day, a lull in the rhythm of daily doing, a period when nothing happens that demands active participation...

...At first the quiet times might be quite barren or a retreat from exhaustion. One has to get used to the stillness even after it has been achieved. The time may be used for taking stock, for examining one's life direction, one's plans, one's relations, and the like. This in itself is most profitable. It is like cleaning out the closets, or the desk drawers, and getting things in order.

The time may be used for focusing or re-focusing one's purposes in the light of what at first may be only one's idea of the best and the highest. Then quiet changes begin to take place. Somewhere along the way, one's idea of the best and the highest takes on a transcendent character and one begins to commune, to communicate with one's idea of the best and the highest - only a man does not talk to, or with, an idea. When the awareness of God comes in - how He entered, one does not know - one is certain that he has been there all the time. This assurance is categorical and becomes the very core of one's faith; indeed, it becomes more and more one's faith." (Thurman, Meditations of the Heart, 27-28)

I love how Thurman puts the idea of getting still in the presence of God.

• Withdraw daily from the rat-race of life
• Get still in your heart
• Your physical body cries out for such heart-and-space stillness
• Take time to "do nothing" but be with God
• If you're new at this, tiredness and exhaustion will take over, and the God-times may seem barren and dry
• Our world does not train us for this kind of stillness, so it takes getting used-to
• Once achieved as a lifestyle it becomes the gateway to the Source of Life
• In the stillness be examined by God, as you engage in listening prayer
• In the stillness "spring cleaning" happens every day (there's a lot of useless garbage in the human heart, which accrues in inverse proportion to the amount of "still time" with God)
• Then... God breaks in, creativity happens, life results, energy gets retored, purpose gets defined, direction is given, transcendence takes over, and one communes (dwells/abides) with God

Where Was God When the Tornado Came?

Storm forming over our house

I'll be teaching two sessions of a workshop at our coming conference in Green Lake, Wisconsin, that I'm calling "Where Was God when the Tornado Came?" Here's the description:

WHERE WAS GOD WHEN THE TORNADO CAME? How do we respond when someone asks us a question like this?  In this workshop we will see how the reality of God as all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing is compatible with the existence of moral and natural evil, and why belief in such a God makes the best worldview-sense of moral and natural evil. Led by John Piippo.

I'll be bringing in materials from my "problem of evil" sections in my MCCC philosophy of religion classes. I've been studying this issue for decades, and am now putting it together in an hour and a half package.

I'm reading two new (to me) texts that are excellent:

- Nature Red in Tooth and Claw, by Michael J. Murray. Murray's book is on the problem of animal suffering, and brings in the issue of natural evil. (Note: Greg Boyd's warfare worldview denies the distinction between moral evil and natural evil, arguing that all evil is due to the free choices of created agents.)

- The Problem of Evil, by University of Notre Dame philosopher Peter Inwagen. Inwagen is brilliant and his writing is challenging.

I looking forward to presenting this.

When Your Mind Wanders During Prayer (Prayer Summer)

The Focus of Prayer Is Not Prayer

Monroe sunset

The focus of prayer is not prayer itself, but God himself.

James Houston says that "this is absolutely basic to prayer, but it is easy to forget in today's world." (Houston, The Transforming Power of Prayer: Deepening Your Friendship with God, 34) 

In this way prayer is like a sign. A sign is, ultimately, not about itself, but about something else; viz., that to which it points to.

Or, prayer is like a tool. Tools have specific purposes beyond themselves. This is important to know, especially for me since I inherited many of my father's tools but have no idea of what many of them are for. I've got a lot of tools sitting around, on display. This might look impressive, but tools are not meant to just be looked at. Like, "Look at all these tools lying here in my garage. Aren't they cool?"

We are not to pray simply because we can, or because it's the religious thing to do. Houston writes: "Prayer is our response to God's interest in us and his love for us. To pray is to become aware that God's Spirit lives within us. Through prayer, we explore a deeper and more intimate relationship with God." (Ib.)

Jeremiah 29:13 says, "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." In true prayer we find God. That is the point of the whole thing. It's the point of our life.