John Shuck Made Me Do thiS

Do we make things too hard?

2012-02-15T08:06:00.000-08:00

2 Kings 5
Naaman Healed of Leprosy
1 Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the LORD had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy.[a]
2 Now bands of raiders from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. 3 She said to her mistress, “If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”
4 Naaman went to his master and told him what the girl from Israel had said. 5 “By all means, go,” the king of Aram replied. “I will send a letter to the king of Israel.” So Naaman left, taking with him ten talents[b] of silver, six thousand shekels[c] of gold and ten sets of clothing. 6 The letter that he took to the king of Israel read: “With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy.”
7 As soon as the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his robes and said, “Am I God? Can I kill and bring back to life? Why does this fellow send someone to me to be cured of his leprosy? See how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me!”
8 When Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his robes, he sent him this message: “Why have you torn your robes? Have the man come to me and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel.” 9 So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house. 10 Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.”
11 But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. 12 Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage.
13 Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” 14 So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.

Last Sunday this was the text of the sermon, and it got me thinking. I went past the obvious things to the simple.

I was struck by Naaman’s attitude toward the offer of healing; he was going to get exactly what he wanted, free for the asking, but he got angry. Why? Well, he wanted healing, but he wanted it to be difficult. Or impressive, or whatever his mind thought it should be. Instead he gets, “Go wash in the river”.

His servants tell him “If he’d asked you to do something hard you would have been done by now, go wash you idiot”

He did, and it worked.

Isn’t this like us?

How often do we pass up what’s right in front of us, because we want it to be more difficult? Is this why we have folks that think they can work their way into God’s kingdom? Is grace really too easy?

These are all good questions, but what really struck me is how this applies to how we read and interpret scripture.

How often do we skip over the plain meaning of the text, because it’s just too simple? It seems as though we just aren’t satisfied to read and accept the text as it is. We need Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic dictionaries, concordances, interlinears, and all kinds of other tools to look for something beneath the surface. I’m not saying these things are bad, nor am I saying that there aren’t layers of meaning in the scriptures. What I am saying is that I think that we’re afraid of the simple. We want there to be complexity. We want that feeling of discovering the hidden meaning. Like Naaman, we want it to be harder than it needs to be.

Personally, I think it has something to do with our desire to be in control, but I’m not sure that’s the entire story.

Which leaves one question. Why?

Presbyterian type thoughts

2011-11-28T09:34:00.000-08:00

This weeks sermon was on the Samaritan woman at the well. When the "you have had 5 husbands and the man you live with now is not your husband" part came up, we got an interesting take. I dare say that most of us assumed that the woman was promiscuous, or loose, or that she was the problem. However, the suggestion was made that this might not be the case. What if she had been abandoned by these 5 men, and the guy she was living with was her only means of support? True, there is really no textural support either way, but it certainly gives a new perspective on her reaction.

Apology

2011-11-23T13:15:00.000-08:00

I'd like to do something that doesn't happen very often here in blog world, and that is apologize.

For reasons that really aren't relevant, nor something for public consumption, I have been less pleasant that I normally try to be.

Unfortunately Dan has been the target of much of my less than civil responses.

So Dan, I'd like to apologize for my tone of late.

We disagree, but I've been more disagreeable than necessary.

I'm sorry.

Lutheran type thoughts.

2011-11-21T09:01:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was one of my Lutheran Sundays, and as such they were celebrating Christ the King Sunday.

The text the pastor preached on was Matthe25:31-46, the sheep and the goats. While I was listening I had a couple of thoughts.

The first is a result of a bunch of research I did on that chapter a few years ago. Simply put these parables are primarily about judgment. To boil it down, at some point Christ is going to judge us all and some are going to spend eternity with Him, and the rest are going to spend eternity in a decidedly less comfortable place.

The second is so simple I think most of us just look past it. Many will use the sheep and goats to justify what is called the "social gospel". Essentially, if you feed the poor, clothe the naked, etc, you'll get into heaven. Now, before the lynch mob comes out let me say that not only are these things good things that we are called to do, but I actually participate in them myself. Back to yesterday. As the pastor was preaching I was struck by a really simple thought. The judgment had already taken place. The sheep were separated from the goats first thing. The sheep weren't saved because the did certain things, the did certain things because they were saved. The first words Jesus says to the sheep are;

"34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world."

Clearly these folks were "in" long before they actually did anything.

It doesn't seem like it should be this simple, and maybe it's not. But the more I thought about it the more it makes sense. Whatever we do is in response to God's grace in choosing the sheep, not as a means to get chosen.

Anyway, just some post sermon thoughts.

No Need for a Title

2011-11-06T11:13:00.000-08:00

"I engage in these conversations in an effort by God's grace through the leadership of the Holy Spirit to learn how and improve on doing this study the correct way and to learn from my mistakes to move away from doing it the incorrect way."

“Each time that someone suggests "well, I (hoity toity, wonderful ME) rely upon the Holy Spirit, NOT my reason, while YOU merely rely upon your flawed reason..." each time someone suggests that sort of verbal vomit, they are exposing their arrogance and hypocrisy and all-around plain goofiness, not to mention a bit of diabolical divisiveness. Stop it.”

“…you give a bullshit answer that implies YOU begin with the Spirit of God, but I/we only rely upon our reason. That is NOT of grace, it is NOT respectful. It is slimy and diabolical and excrement-filled. It is not the sort of behavior that becomes Christians.”

What Beliefs Identify a Christian? #2

2011-10-20T11:00:00.000-07:00

I earlier posted about a fellow blogger who believes that there are certain beliefs that are common to all who claim to be Christian, and that those beliefs are so common that we can assume them to be true in all cases. I previously offered evidence that would tend to dispute that claim, now I offer more. These quotes are from a pastor of a mainline protestant Christian denomination, so I guess we could assume he is a Christian.

"Did Jesus Die for the Sins of Humanity, or Not? Not."

"Adam and Eve supposedly sinned in the garden and as punishment all their descendents are infused with a shot of original sin. Since God the Father needs to have his honor restored (talk about patriarchal nonsense) he kills his Son (who in the weird Trinitarian formula is really the same guy, sort of) so that everyone on planet Earth doesn't spend eternity in hell. If anyone takes twenty minutes thinking this through they can see that the whole structure is absurd. Beginning with the fact that Adam and Eve never existed."

"The great Christian doctrines such as Trinity, Creation, Sin, Christology, Atonement, and Eschatology, are no longer great. They are shadows. They don't speak of reality on a grand scale like they once purported to do. They may fill an emotional or psychological niche here and there. For more and more people they hold little interest or suasion. The world has passed these doctrines by in the way that science has left alchemy."

To be clear, my point is not that I deny or question whether this gentleman is or is not a Christian. Nor is it a desire to define, limit, exclude, or include anyone from anything. It is simply to point out that as we look at what is called Christianity these days that there is less and less that one can take for granted in terms of commonly held beliefs.

What did the Pharisees know, and when did they know it?

2011-10-11T07:15:00.001-07:00

John 5 45 “But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. 46 If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. 47 But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?”

There has been a lot of talk about the historicity of the OT recently. We’ve got the historical camp, the epic camp, the mythical camp (which overlaps with the epic folks) and the “it’s all a bunch of hooey” folks.
So how did Jesus treat the OT? If we look at John 5 Jesus is giving a dissertation to the religious leaders who are ticked because He healed on the Sabbath. Jesus response is essentially that He is doing His fathers business and that if His father says heal on the Sabbath, then folks get healed on the Sabbath. But He goes further, actually pretty clearly equating Himself with YHWH. Obviously this is scandalous, but what is interesting is who Jesus appeals to as witnesses. (Remember Jewish law required 2 witnesses for testimony to be accepted in a court of law). Who does Jesus appeal to, Moses. We see this same thinking in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man.
Luke 16:27 “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’
29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’
30 “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’
31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”
So it would appear that there is enough accurate information about Jesus for Him to suggest the following.
1. There is enough accurate information in the OT for people to repent and come to faith in Christ.
2. There is enough accurate information in the OT for Jesus to cite it as acceptable as a witness in a court of law.
It seems clear, that if folks aren’t going to believe the testimony of the OT, that they’ll have a hard time with accepting anything else.

What Beliefs Identify a Christian?

2011-10-02T06:56:00.000-07:00

A while back there was a bit of a fuss over someones contention that one must assume that a self identified Christian would look to the Holy Spirit for guidance.

A few years ago I would have agreed. But now...?

I was perusing the blog of an ordained Minister of Word and Sacrament, ordained by a mainline Christian denomination. This gentleman self identifies as a progressive christian as well as a minister of his denomination. He wrote excitedly about a book that his congregation was about to begin studying. This book was written by another christian who is also ordained in a leadership position in a different mainline denomination. Now one would assume that being ordained in christian denominations might suggest a certain level of acceptance of what one might call historic christian doctrine.

Yet we have this list of "12 theses for a new reformation".

1. Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.

2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.

3. The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.

4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.

5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.

6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.

7. Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.

8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.

9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.

10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.

11. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.

12. All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

If this is what we get from progressive Christians, can we assume that there is any shred of commonly held beliefs that identify a Christian?

It seems not.

Christian Rebuke (updated)

2011-09-24T06:54:00.000-07:00

In a comment on another thread I was rebuked for honestly answering a question. The rebuker said the following when I questioned the tone of his responses.

"“I was rebuking you in the name of Christ our Lord because of how wrong that answer appeared to be.”

I'll throw out his words and let folks decide if this is actually a biblical rebuke in the "name of Christ our Lord".

I'll be blunt with you here: it's this sort of verbal vomit that makes folk sickened by your sort of Christian. This repeated arrogant and sanctimonious excrement that you spew from your mouth sometimes is not becoming an adult Christian or adult human.

"Well, I'm relying upon God while YOU are relying on your own pitiful reason," is just bullshit of the most rotten and diabolical sort.
“…, but that sort of arrogance will turn the conversation right off. It is not worthy of those called by God. It isn't even worthy of just a normal adult.”

“Trying to suggest otherwise is a sign of mental diarrhea and you are better than that,…”
“This is more of the arrogant mouth shit that some less mature (or just vainly arrogant) Christians spew instead of actual responses. Just to reiterate: I'm not at all interested in dealing this sort of spiritual and mental diarrhea-of-the-mouth-and-mind,…”
“Would you like to answer the real question or do you prefer your vomitous crud approach?”
” As it is, I'm beginning to wonder if it's just beyond your skill set.“
“Each time that someone suggests "well, I (hoity toity, wonderful ME) rely upon the Holy Spirit, NOT my reason, while YOU merely rely upon your flawed reason..." each time someone suggests that sort of verbal vomit, they are exposing their arrogance and hypocrisy and all-around plain goofiness, not to mention a bit of diabolical divisiveness. Stop it.”

“…you give a bullshit answer that implies YOU begin with the Spirit of God, but I/we only rely upon our reason. That is NOT of grace, it is NOT respectful. It is slimy and diabolical and excrement-filled. It is not the sort of behavior that becomes Christians.”

“I'll continue in Christian conversation respectfully IF that is the level on which you wish to correspond. But I must insist no more of this brain rot.”

“"Or is the case that each time you have a yearning, you assume that it's the Holy Spirit leading you and you really rely upon emotions and whims to help make those decisions?"

“As well as the notion that you have the ability to explain to me what you mean.”
“I DO think it is an important question/point to make, although I've begun to doubt that you have the discerning powers to see why.”

Here was one of my responses to these rebukes "in the name of Christ our Lord"

“Please don't take offense, but I have absolutely no idea what role the Holy Spirit plays for you in these kinds of things. Therefore I can only speak for myself in how I approach things. If you think that humble reliance on the Holy Spirit is arrogant, then I can only apologize. I have no other answer to give you, and I won't be bullied or insulted into saying so. If you want respectful Christian conversation, perhaps bullying insulting attacks are a poor way to go about it. You can disagree with my approach to letting the Holy Spirit guide me, but to assault me for honestly and humbly sharing such is neither Christian, adult, or conducive to respectful conversation. Your choice, I'll close with this.”

Finally we got here.

“I'll add that one of my spiritual gifts is discernment, I guess you could stretch the definition of spiritual gift to try to force it to make your point. Having said that, I've answered this multiple times, I will not engage in any further discussion on this topic. I get it, you don't like my answer, so let it go.”

To which the rebuker answered at 9/16/11 9:15 AM

"“I've let it go, Craig.”

Yet at 9/23/11 7:55 PM, we get the following (after several earlier comments demonstrating that this was clearly not "let go"

“My question to you: When you are striving to interpret a passage SEEKING the HS leading, what else do you rely upon besides your reason to sort it out?
And, related, and still unanswered...
What does that look/feel like to you, being "guided by the HS?" How is that different than striving by God's grace to use your reason to sort things out/discern meaning?"

OK folks, you make the call

UPDATE

This gentleman took umbrage at the following.

"It IS my position because it IS the Biblical position."

He responded by saying that the commenter was "Conflating his hunch with God's Word."

Leaving aside the obvious that the commenter was not "Conflating his hunch with God's Word".

I then asked the following question.

"So it is a problem for you when someone identifies the Biblical position and conforms their position to the Bible." In fairness, had I used a question mark instead of a period my question might have been better received. Nonetheless, this is the response I got.

"again, I rebuke this verbal vomit in the Name of Jesus Christ the Lord. Get over yourself and quit uttering this bullshit out of your mouth. It only makes your breath stink."

This from someone who values "Grace, grace, grace..."

Update #2

Still more grace.

"I'm sorry if you truly are so unaware as to not realize what an ass you're sounding like. Embrace grace. Don't ask stupid questions. Are you saying that you truly don't know you're being a graceless ass?"

Does anyone else find "embrace grace" in this context to be at least a tiny bit ironic?

Jonah

2011-09-09T14:28:00.000-07:00

At Dan’s place he asked me the following.
“Tell me, Craig, do you really think whether or not Jonah was an actual person who was actually swallowed by a whale impacts on the incredible power of that story?”

My response was to ask him a couple of clarifying questions.
“What "truth(s)" do you take from the story of Jonah?”
Dan has said this.
“We read Jonah, for instance, and find this absolutely fascinating and painful story of a man who tried to run from God, of a God who loved everyone, even the worst people, even people who try to run from God, and of God's gracious, all-embracing mercy. Wow, what a GREAT story!”

My other question was.
“What parts (if any) of the story of Jonah do you consider factual?”

To that end I’ve put together a set of bullet points from the story that appear to be presented as facts. I am hoping that Dan will respond by indicating T or F for each one and I would hope for some reason why he answered that way.

I would also hope for some detail into how he reached his conclusion based on what facts he affirms.

If anyone else wants to chime in that would be great, but this is primarily for Dan

Short version of the story of Jonah.

1. Jonah is a guy from Joppa, the son of Amittai. T/F
2. God spoke to Jonah. T/F
3. God told Jonah to go to Nineveh T/F
4. God told Jonah to preach against Nineveh because it was extremely wicked T/F
5. Jonah went to Tarshish T/F
6. Jonah went on a ship T/F
7. The ship was hit by a storm T/F
8. The storm was caused by God T/F
9. Jonah slept through the storm T/F
10. The captain/crew prayed to their gods for safety T/F
11. The captain woke Jonah up and told him to pray too T/F
12. Jonah tells them he is running from the God who created the land and sea T/F
13. Jonah says throw me over the side T/F
14. The storm stops T/F
15. The Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah T/F
16. Jonah prayed/submitted to Gods direction and the fish vomited him onto dry land T/F
17. Jonah walked through Nineveh for 3 days preaching that the Lord will destroy the city if they don’t repent T/F
18. The city repents T/F
19. Jonah got mad because God didn’t destroy Nineveh T/F
20. God sent a plant for shade T/F
21. The plant grew and died supernaturally quickly T/F

Matt 12:38-41
38 Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from you.” 39 He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 41 The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here.
Does Jesus treat the story of Noah as a non-factual myth or epic?
Matt. 16:4
4 A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” Jesus then left them and went away.
Does Jesus treat the story of Noah as a non-factual myth?

Questions from my response at your blog.
1. So what meaning do you pour into the story of Passover?
2. We can see how the Jewish people have treated Passover for thousands of years, we can see how Jesus/the early Church treated Passover. So how do you treat Passover?
3. What "truth(s)" do you take from the story of Jonah?
4. So while you have obviously come up with a hunch or series of hunches that satisfy your sense of logic and Reason, there is no reason for anyone else to accept your hunches on the matter. Does that not seem problematic to you?

Some thoughts from Francis Chan #3

2011-09-07T10:26:00.003-07:00

Continuing on, Chan says on page 136:

“My thoughts are not your thoughts.” It means we think differently! He hasn’t asked us to figure out why He does the things He does. We can’t. We are not capable. Our thinking is inferior to His. Let’s not think that spending a bit of time meditating on the mysteries of the universe places us on a level that allows us to call God into question. Our God is not a person who is slightly more intelligent: His thoughts are infinitely higher than ours. Knowing that the gap is so large, shouldn’t we put our energy toward submitting rather than analyzing? It is natural-no, it is expected that there will be times when you won’t figure Him out.”

From p. 135.

“the fact is Scripture is filled with divine actions that don’t fit our human standards of logic or morality. But they don’t need to, because we are the clay and He is the potter. We need to stop trying to domesticate God or confine Him to tidy categories and compartments that reflect our human sentiments rather than His inexplicable ways.”

From p. 136 again.

“It’s incredibly arrogant to pick and choose which incomprehensible truths we embrace. No one wants to ditch Gods plan of redemption, even though it doesn’t make sense to us. Neither should we erase God’s revealed plan of punishment because it doesn’t sit well with us. As soon as we do this, we are putting God’s actions in submission tour own reasoning, which is a ridiculous thing for clay to do.”

From p. 162, another prayer.

Forgive me , Lord, for wanting to erase all the things in scripture that don’t sit well with me. Forgive me for trying to hide some of your actions to make You more palatable to the world. Forgive me for trying to make you fit my standards of justice and goodness and love. You are God; You are good; I don’t always understand You, but I love You. Thank you for who You are.

Finally (for now) this from p. 162.

“First, God is love, but He also defines what love is. We don’t have the license to define love according to our own standards and sensibilities.”

I’ll add more as I have time, but mostly go read the whole book.

Some thoughts from Francis Chan #2

2011-09-07T10:26:00.001-07:00

Since I didn’t decide to write these posts until I was pretty far into the book, I’m going to start with what I highlighted on the first read through and then go back and pick up the earlier chapters later. One reason why I am doing this is the later chapters deal with passages beyond the scope of hell and these are what so often generate controversy.

P. 130 Chan comments on Romans 9
“What if God, desiring to show His wrath and to make known His power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy, which He has prepared beforehand for glory? Rom. 9-22-23
Chan Writes.
“What if? What if God decided to do this? What if God, as the sovereign creator of the universe, decided to create “vessels of wrath prepared for destruction”? And what if He did so in order to “show His wrath” and “make known His power”? And what if it’s His way of showing those He saves just how great His glory and mercy is? What would you do if He chose to do this? Refuse to believe in Him? Refuse to be a “vessel of mercy’? Does that make any sense? Would you refuse to follow Him? Really? Is that wise?
“What if is a probing question that forces us to face our inflated view of our own logic? It’s another way of asking just how high is my view of God.”

“In other words, God may want to display His wrath and power by punishing sinners, or He may have some other purpose in mind. Either way, we must come to a place where we can let God be God. We need to surrender our perceived right to determine what is just and humbly recognize that God alone gets to decide how He is going to deal with people.”

Some Thoughts from Francis Chan #1

2011-09-07T10:25:00.001-07:00

It’s been a while since I’ve written here, mainly because I just haven’t been moved enough to take the time from other things. Now I’ve got some time and I thought I’d throw out some quotes from a great book.

Erasing Hell was inspired by the flap over the Love Wins by Rob Bell. According to Chan the book inspired him to do his own research about what the Bible taught about hell, and write about it. I think that there is much to be learned from this book and that it goes beyond the doctrine of hell. Ultimately as context is important I am offering some quotes in the hope that you will pick up the book and see things in context.
He starts by saying this in the preface.
“However, no matter how many human filters we solicited to purify the words of this book, it’s still fallible. Because of this we have included many direct quotes from Scripture. Read the Scriptures we’ve quoted as truth directly from the mouth of God. Pause and meditate deeply on these verses whenever they arise. Those words are ultimately what God wants you to cherish and embrace.

From the introduction.
“So I decided to write a book about hell. And honestly-I’m scared to death; I’m scared because there is so much at stake. Think about it. If I say there is no hell and it turns out that there is a hell, I may lead people into the very place I convinced them did not exist! If I say there is a hell and I’m wrong, I may persuade people to frantically spend their lives warning loved ones about a terrifying place that isn’t real. When it comes to hell we can’t afford to be wrong.” . “Let’s be eager to leave what is familiar for what is true. Nothing outside of God and His truth should be sacred to us.”
“But this book is actually much more than a book on hell. It’s a book about embracing a God who isn’t always easy to understand and whose ways are far beyond us; a God whose thoughts are much higher than our thoughts: a God who, as the sovereign creator and sustainer of all things, has every right to do , as the psalmist says, “whatever he pleases” Ps115:3.”
“God has the right to do WHATEVER He pleases. If I’ve learned one thing from studying hell, it’s the last line. And whether or not you end up agreeing with everything I’ve said about hell, you must agree with Ps. 115:3. Because at the end of the day our feelings and wants and heartaches and desires are not ultimate-only God is ultimate. God tells us plainly that His ways are infinitely higher than ours (Isa. 55:9). Expect then, that scripture will say things that don’t agree with your natural way of thinking.”

He closes the introduction with a prayer that we should all spend more time praying.
“God, I want to know what is true. I know I have cravings that sway and distort my ability to reason. You promise that Your Holy Spirit will guide me into all truth. I pray that He will now. I don’t want to be wrong. I don’t want to be deceived by others or myself. You alone possess all truth, and I want to be on Your side. Give me eyes to see and ears to hear. Give me the courage to live and speak what is right no matter what the cost. I don’t want to believe anything about you that is not true. Amen.

A quick video for your entertainment

2010-02-22T09:59:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBbsEnTf7C4&feature=player_embedded

Classy bunch, those Dems, Classy.

A little sermon tidbit from this morning.

2009-12-06T12:38:00.000-08:00

"Wherever God shows up one of two things happens; salvation or judgment."

Discuss

More inconsistency in the pro-choice camp.

2009-09-13T12:18:00.000-07:00

H/T Neil and Wintery Knight

From Life Site News.com

By Kathleen Gilbert and John Jalsevac

OWOSSO, Michigan, September 11, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - An elderly pro-life activist was shot multiple times and killed this morning in front of Owosso High School in Michigan while he was peacefully protesting abortion with a sign depicting a baby and the word "Life," according to local police cited in the Flint Journal newspaper.

Locals say that the victim, James Pouillon of Owosso, was well-known in the area for his pro-life activities. Columnist Doug Powers wrote on his blog that Pouillon, called “the abortion sign guy" by Owosso locals, was known for standing on street corners holding up signs with pictures of aborted children.

Pastor Matt Trehella of Missionaries to the Preborn said today that Pouillon had joined his organization for a few stops of a pro-life tour less than a month ago. "Jim was a selfless, soft-spoken, kind-hearted man. All who knew him, knew this," he said. "Please pray for Jim's family."

Trehella said that Pouillon was an elderly man who needed constant use of an oxygen machine.

Troy Newman, the President of Operation Rescue (OR), said that Pouillon was a friend of OR. "We are stunned by Jim's murder," he said. "We extend our condolences to the family and share in their grief over his loss. His life was characterized by his love and concern of the vulnerable, and he will be greatly missed.

"We denounce this senseless act of violence in the strongest terms, and pray that this murderer will be swiftly brought to justice."

Reports indicate that a second individual was shot and killed in a different area of the city earlier in the day, and the two shootings are believed to be related, according to Shiawassee County sheriff George Braidwood. According to M-live.com, the second victim has now been identified as Mike Fuoss, 61, the owner of a local gravel pit. Fuoss was found dead in his office.

Police have confirmed that a suspect - a 33-year-old Owosso man - was taken into custody at the suspect's home shortly after the 7:30 a.m. shooting. After being taken into custody he confessed to the second killing as well. Fuoss knew the suspected killer, according to police, and it is so far unknown if Pouillon did as well. The motive for either of the killings is not yet known.

However, Police Chief Michael Compeau said that Pouillon appeared to be a target. "I would speculate it was ... intended," Compeau said, according to the Associated Press. "He was out protesting right across the street from the high school ... and there (were) multiple people around there and that person was targeted."

A black car was parked near the scene of the shooting, where a portable oxygen tank lay in a front yard next to a large sign with the word "Life" and an image of a baby.

In the wake of the tragedy, Fr. Pavone of Priests for Life told LifeSiteNews.com that he hoped to see "a strong expression of indignation from the pro-abortion community, just like there was a strong expression of indignation from the pro-life community at the killing of Dr. Tiller."

Secondly, Fr. Pavone called for "a renewal of unity within the pro-life community, coming to one another's assistance supporting one another, and by no means allowing fear or intimidation to have any role in our lives, but rather to move forward in peaceful organized ways to stand against this evil of abortion."

Compare and contrast:

However, within minutes after news broke that Wichita’s late-term abortionist George Tiller was shot and killed on a Sunday morning while serving as an usher at his Lutheran church, dozens of nationwide pro-life leaders and organizations immediately poured out condemnations against the violence.

Operation Rescue, which had spearheaded peaceful protests of Tiller’s business for several years, was among the first to denounce the “vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning,” adding that they were offering prayers for Tiller’s family.

Interestingly a Google search turned up not one mention of this is any major news organization, not even Fox.

Hypocrisy, you decide.

Since Dan is impatient.

2009-09-10T14:26:00.000-07:00

For anyone who has followed Dan over the recent past,(phrase removed to avoid further offense to Dan). I have asked Dan repeatedly why he refuses to listen to the clear teaching of Jesus on this subject. He finally addressed my question in the thread between he and Bubba. His response is, in essence, that one cannot forgive a wrong done to someone else. I beg to differ. In support of my position I offer the following scripture in numerous translations.

Mathew 6:14-15

NASB

14"(S)For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.15"But (T)if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.

The Message

14-15"In prayer there is a connection between what God does and what you do. You can't get forgiveness from God, for instance, without also forgiving others. If you refuse to do your part, you cut yourself off from God's part.

KJV

14For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:
15But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

ESV

14(AA) For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15(AB) but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

NKJV

14 “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

ASV

14 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Young’s Literal Translation

14`For, if ye may forgive men their trespasses He also will forgive you -- your Father who [is] in the heavens;
15but if ye may not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

The reason I choose this passage is very simple. Dan has repeatedly used the Sermon on the Mount as a piece of scripture which he believes is accurately presented. It would seem that this would give credibility to this particular scripture as an accurate representation of the words of Jesus.

I am intentionally limiting this to this one topic, I'm sure it will go elsewhere.

How refreshing it is to see how tolerant and fair the Left is.

2009-08-30T09:06:00.000-07:00

http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2009/08/bloggingheads-tv-and-me

'nuff said.

More words of wisdom from a PCUSA pastor

2009-08-05T19:22:00.000-07:00

A bit of background for this one. John Shuck has posted a series that he calls A New Reformation. It seems as though his intent is to posit a "New Reformation" based on the work of such scholars as Spong, Funk and others. This is one of the series.

I am enjoying this series on A New Reformation. Here is my pal, Bishop John Shelby Spong. I like him. I don't like him because he ticks off the fundies, but I have to say, that is an added bonus.

The good bishop nailed these theses to the internet over ten years ago. They are a bit dated and actually familiar-sounding now. They are more fully outlined in his book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die.

They are posted all over the web. Here is an accompanying article that goes with them in The 4th R. Like Holy Writ, they have slight variations from place to place. Here is a version I found on the website of St. Peter's Church, Nottingham.

1. Theism as a way of defining God, is dead. God can no longer be understood with credibility as a Being, supernatural in power, dwelling above the sky and prepared to invade human history periodically to enforce the divine will. So, most theological talk today is meaningless unless we find a new way to speak of God.
2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.
3. The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes the divinity of Christ, as traditionally understood, impossible.
5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.
6. The view of the cross as a sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God that must be dismissed.
7. Resurrection is an action of God, who raised Jesus into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
8. The story of the ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.
9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in Scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behaviour for all time.
10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
11. The hope for life after death must be separated for ever from the behaviour-control mentality of reward and punishment. The church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behaviour.
12. All human beings bear God’s image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore no external description of one’s being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

One more PCUSA pastor.

2009-08-05T19:16:00.001-07:00

heology

1. The universe has meaning and human life has purpose. Human beings are meaning-finding and purpose-finding machines. I'm actually pretty sure we could not even experience a meaningless universe, or go through our lives seeing them as literally meaningless. The question is what meaning? My society, in aggregate, gives one answer. Pillage the world, hurt your enemies, dull your mind and then you die. That is the default. What I call "God" embodies another way.

2. The doctrine of special creation has been magnified by the discoveries of the scope of the earth in time and space as well as the history and functions of life. Our cosmos, drawn within the lines of the limits of our imagination, is always revealed to be shocking and amazing to each successive generation. I take this as evidence that it came to be through forces and mechanisms that will eternally be outside our understanding. That's pretty damn special. And here we are, apparently able to appreciate this cosmos more than any living creature.

3. Death is natural. So is rape. So is war. To say that death is the enemy is to say something that is true for every person who grieves. Everything we say in the face of death is simply intended to blunt its edge as it cuts us to our core. Is this a punishment for sin? (The "wages" of sin?) If we see sin, in part, as enmeshment in an eternally unsatisfactory world full of pain and suffering and want an injustice, then yes, I think one could say that. What the world pays everyone, for all of their efforts, in the end, is death. This is natural, but it is also tragic, and we seek for things that we hope will transcend our deaths.

4. The Bible is full of instances where God is demonstrated to be unpredictable. Job puts to rest the idea that the righteous are protected from suffering and Jesus and the prophets reverse this entirely, saying that the righteous are promised suffering in a world gone wrong. So will we find an algorithm to determine when, where and how God will intervene? Can we find the on-switch for God's action in our lives? Of course not. No one ever will, and looking will always be fruitless. But is the guy who attributes overcoming addiction to the intervention of God a lunatic or a liar? Possibly neither. If God has no impact on our lives whatsoever apart from our conscious volition, then we need to retire theology forever and find something else to talk about.

5. Prayer is a broad term for a technology of spiritual practice. It is a technique, and a vague one at that. A huge weakness of Protestantism is the loss of the monastic tradition and the majority of ancient spiritual practices that have sustained Christians for millennia. We need to reach back for the broad array of practices that we have forgotten, and build new practices as we find we have needs in a world that is unlike any in the past. If people choose to ask God to intervene, then what good is it to stop them or put them down? I've had a few experiences myself where coincidence and bias don't seem to quite cut it. It just saddens me that our rich heritage of spiritual practice has been reduced to a laundry list whispered to God.

Christology

6. I think that Jesus Christ changes everything. Jesus is an eternal, ineffible and incomprehensible paradox that as Christians we are to embody, even without really understanding most of the time what it is we're getting ourselves into. Would we dare do so if we really understood? Would we line up to be crucified the way we line up to shake the preacher's hand after the sermon? Doubt it. I do not think we should ever surrender a transformative mystery we are called to live into for the sake of a comprehensible, domesticated, just-another-teacher.
7. Jesus Christ was never, is never, and will never be credible. Jesus Christ is crazy. You know that concept of what your life means, what makes you valuable and good, what you are called to do, and who you are? Jesus shatters that. Then he shatters it again. Pontious Pilate was credible. The Sanhedrin was credible. The credible people are the ones who killed Jesus. It was his followers who had no credibility. We frame these truths in myth because there is nothing else in the human toolbox that is anywhere near equal to the task.

8. Heather Reichgott challenged me here, and I'll go halfway. I think that acknowledging Jesus as coming from Mary's sexuality, at least in part, is important. It also is interesting that men were not involved at all except as a foster parent. I still don't like the virgin birth because I believe it does denigrate sexuality as a dirty thing that cannot really have touched Jesus. If Jesus is human, then he had to come from the same messy, fun stuff we all came from - or as I see it, no deal.

9. Its the classic neon sign, flashing in the urban night; the roadside sign in hand-painted letters on a country road: Jesus Saves. If this is not true, then we quit now and find something that will actually help us become whole. Historically, we've called that "Saving" atonement, something Jesus did at a particular time and place in the past, has done throughout the history of the cosmos from beginning to end, past and future, and seeks to get us to participate in with every moment of your life and mine. For me, penal sub atonement doesn't come anywhere near to covering that.

10. The resurrected Jesus teleports around and passes through crowds, appears and disappears. Clearly the resurrected Jesus, even in a very literalistic reading of the Gospels, was not just Jesus' same body walking around with the same properties other bodies have. The resurrection is a thing, at its core, that we cannot understand fully. We are just like the first disciples and apostles - Paul in particular. The resurrection is something we experience, something we participate in, with our whole lives. Even if a modern nurse could step out of a time machine and do a full physical exam of the risen Jesus, I don't think the resurrection would be affected one bit. If it would be, then it is not the resurrection depicted in the Gospels.

11. Apocalyptic elements have not been part of the main "Christian agenda" for a while now. Well, I guess there's "Jesus is coming, look busy" type evangelism, or fear-of-Hell evangelism, but a lot of even conservative evangelical types look down on this as simply leveraging self-preservation to get people into the pews. I'm fine with tossing that part out. To lose all of the apocalyptic, though, would mean we also have to lose, say, the thoughts and words of Martin Luther King Jr. I am not willing to "expunge" that. When, mere days from his assassination, MLK says he has seen the promised land, he is talking apocalypse. He is talking about the turning of time, the bending of the arc of the universe. Who cares about Jesus floating in the sky and pointing at us in judgement at the end of history like a work of Baroque art? When I read MLK's words, I shiver in my bones, because I know the apocalypse is coming.

God's Domain according to Jesus

12. The Gospels are chock-full of Jesus' suspicion of the essential character of neighbors. It is not about trusting your neighbor, it is about loving your neighbor even when s/he is a certified asshole to you all day long. Even given the guarantee that you will be hurt by others, you are never to hurt in return. That is not a trust ethic, that is a nonviolent ethic. The domain of God is ruled by one who gave up all the trappings of power that we expect and was tortured and executed at our hands. Think of any human government, ever. The domain of God is not that.
13. Jesus urges his followers to celebrate life as though they had just discovered a cache of coins in a field or been invited to a state banquet. They are urged not to worry about the future but to be present to the beauty of the moment. They are exhorted not to hold onto their lives but to lose their lives, and in losing them, they find them at last.

14. For Jesus, God's domain is a realm without social boundaries. In that realm there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free, homosexual nor heterosexual, friend nor enemy, liberal nor conservative, insider nor outsider, rich nor poor, less nor more abled, gendered nor transgendered...

15. For Jesus, God's domain has no brokers, no mediators between human beings and divinity. There is a state of atonement, when separations fall, even separations between us and God. In the end, we are all in God. We are Christ's body in the perfected sense of God's purpose culminated.

16. For Jesus, the rites of entry into the domain of God are open to all regardless of the things that separate us from each other in other domains. If you can have water dumped on your head, you are in. If you eat bread (or another fruit of the earth for those allergic to wheat or something) then you are in. And now you have to deal with, as family, everyone else who has water dumped on them and who eats food. Good luck :)

17. In the kingdom, forgiveness is reciprocal: individuals can have it only if they practice it. Forgiveness is the hallmark of restorative justice, in contrast to retributive justice.

18. The kingdom is a journey without end: one arrives only by departing. It is therefore a perpetual odyssey. Exile and homecoming are the true conditions of authentic existence.

The canon

19. The canon is the collection of writings that have, historically, connected people with God and helped them grown in wisdom and understanding. Throughout history, the Church has made use of other writings, words and practices which are not found in the "canon" of the Bible, and the Church will continue to do this. It is right and good to do this, and we should just be honest about it. "Canon" means "we consistently, across time and space, find a way to God there".
20. We do not use the Bible as a rule-book. If we did, the result would be hysterical. The Bible is not intended to be a rulebook, in my opinion. If you go looking for rules, best of luck. If you go, however, looking for identity - now there's something you might find.

The language of faith

21. In continually articulating who we are and what we are about, we should continue to use the full breadth of human written expression found in the Bible - paradox, hyperbole, exaggeration, metaphor, simile, aphorism, epistle, narrative, poem, song, allegory, folktale, martyr cycle, instruction, debate, drama, liturgy and so on, as well as the fuller variety of human expression including music, visual arts, and dance which go beyond a literal text and express meaning in new ways. Our language should be as limitless as creation.

This is the view of someone who is appearantly an ordained PCUSA pastor

2009-08-05T19:13:00.000-07:00

Members of the Committee,

It is a Christian obligation to acknowledge, affirm, welcome and create an environment in which the love between two persons, regardless of sexual identity or preference, is fully invited and held to a high standard of mutual obligation between partners. I believe this because those who have struggled within the closet often cannot receive the love of God and proclaim it until they emerge as the person that God has intended them to be.

The closet is not a euphemistic metaphor to which we can casually refer in some derogatory or humorous manner. The closet is a prison cell that society has constructed for those who are not heterosexual. Yet as the witness of countless persons who have struggled within the closet and emerged alive attests, it was Christ who released their soul from captivity, and it was only out of the closet that Christ could fully be received. For it is the emergence of the person from out of the closet that attests to the power of the Gospel to liberate the lonely, the oppressed, the outcast and the sinner to a new life in Christ irrespective of sexual identity.

Christian theology needs to be tempered with a pragmatic realism that understands one consistent feature in the map of Christian history: Its functional social mutability. How Christian theology and Scripture functions among people is constrained by the cultural boundaries a given society constructs. In this regard the notion of sin is a socially constructed understanding of Biblical rules and mandates for conduct. What we truly believe to be absolute sin today is not the same as it was ages ago, regardless in some cases of what Scripture actually says. The meaning of Scripture mutates with each culture and civilization as different peoples construct different meanings of the text to communicate and reveal the risen Christ in their midst.

Many who claim authoritative interpretations of Scripture maintain that women ought not hold offices of teaching men theology or holding any position of authority over men in the church or in the home. Women are commanded by God to inhabit specific social roles. The social equality of women in the West is a recent development after centuries of what we now assert were poor interpretations of the role of women as revealed in Scripture. That women have a vital function in the ministry and can indeed hold offices of authority over men in theological matters is far more normative than ever and will continue to be more normative with succeeding generations. This is certainly the case within the PCUSA. The same discussions about the role of women, slaves and people of color have taken place within the PCUSA as we are now discussing concerning homosexuality. We need to observe this from a rational perspective lest we fold into some irrational progressivism where we simply assume that our age is more enlightened than previous ages.

One reading is to assert what Paul or Jesus would have said in our current context. Such assertions inevitably take the shape of whoever is doing the arguing for a given position. As one assertion runs, Paul would have not supported even benevolent slavery today. However it is quite clear from the text that benevolent slavery was something he with Jesus most likely accepted. Such a supposed trajectory does not change the fact that there is good reason to believe that Paul supported an owner’s authority over a slave who works for no wage at all other than a forced exchange of shelter and food. This sort of authoritarian situation does not justify benevolence no matter how familial it is rendered. Most sovereign states have laws that are binding to prevent this sort of economic exchange. Yet many Christian traditions, PCUSA notwithstanding, would oppose a repeal of slavery laws or the equal treatment of women or people of other races on moral grounds rooted in Scripture – the same Scripture that once justified slavery. This is reasoned through how a particular social structure mediates what it believes to be the revealed Word in Scripture for them at a given moment in time.

The point is that we make assumptions on how we read these texts based on variability of contextual matters. I have been on several sides of the debate regarding those in relationships other than traditional, monogamous, heterosexual relationships and the turning point was not in how I understood sin, but in how I understood love and what healthy and up-building relatedness looks like. Our society and psychology mediate our relatedness to God in often intractable ways. We can only relate to God through the media of our experience with the world. If we regulate behaviors in ways that reinforce disordered relationships between non-heterosexuals such as forbidding marriage among other things, our systems of purity and social constructs function as media that will inevitably reinforce disordered relationships with God, or altogether kill off any such possibility. Sin as something prohibitive of behavior is not the issue as much as what kind of relationships serve to mediate the ability of one to receive what is good from God and what relationships fail in that capacity. The assertion that all same gendered relationships are inherently disordered is at stake.

Can a non-heterosexual couple receive the love of Christ in their relationship more fully than outside that relationship? The evidence from same-gender relationships tells us that we should affirm this claim and reject that same-gender relationships are inherently disordered. It is clear that any form of slavery is unjust and ultimately dehumanizing; and women in places of theological and Biblical authority over men is up-building and not destructive to the church. Likewise we are obligated to affirm where the love of Christ is being revealed, experienced, expressed and witnessed among those who happen to have found Him in a place that the church currently rejects as legitimate. Not to respond to this revelation of Christ is to grieve the same Spirit that gives life to the church universal.
Andrew Tatusko, M.Div., Th.M.
Duncansville, Pa.

More awesomeness from P-BO, and open letter to el Presidente.

2009-08-05T15:15:00.000-07:00

An Open Letter to President Obama Regarding the Appointment of Science Advisor John Holdren

Dear President Obama,

I note with dismay your appointment of Dr. John Holdren as Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Although Dr. Holdren’s experience in academia and administration may be adequate, his publicly expressed views regarding population control disqualify him from holding office.

I will set aside objections to Dr. Holdren’s scientific competence. Despite his strong scientific credentials, he advanced theories in the 1970’s and 1980’s that have become the paradigm of ideologically motivated junk science. He and his collaborators (such as co-author Paul Ehrlich) predicted world-wide famine as a consequence of over-population by the late 20th century, and they advocated radical coercive public policies to avert catastrophe. These predictions were explicit, public, and were published under professional imprimatur. Obviously, the predictions were wrong. Dr.Holdren’s predictions are an exemplar of scientific incompetence.

But it is the spectre of Dr. Holdren’s competence, not his incompetence, that concerns me. In 1977 Dr. Holdren and his colleagues Paul and Anne Ehrlich published the book Ecoscience. In it, Holdren and his co-authors endorse the serious consideration of radical measures to reduce the human population, particularly third world populations, such as India, China and Africa. The measures include:

• People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.

• Women — particularly women of insufficient means due to poverty, nationality, marital status, or youth — could be forced to abort their children and undergo sterilization.

• Implementation of a system of "involuntary birth control," in which girls at puberty would be implanted with an infertility device and only could have it removed temporarily if they received permission from the government to have a baby.

• Undesirable populations could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into drinking water or in food.

• Single mothers and teen mothers who managed to have their children despite measures to prevent fertility should have their babies seized from them and given away to others to raise.

• A transnational “Planetary Regime” and a transnational police force should be assembled to enforce population control.

Although Dr. Holdren recently has asserted that he does not support coercive measures to reduce population, he has continued to champion population control ‘science’ and he includes his book “Ecoscience” prominently on his CV, without disclaimer.

In other words, Dr. Holdren dissembles. He insists, despite the record, that he no longer believes what he 'didn’t believe' then. Evidently you accept his denial. As you are, Mr. President, a man of good will, inclined to see the best in people, you may have misunderstood Dr. Holdren’s ideology. It has a history that runs from early 20th century eugenics to the German T4 program to the modern population control movement and eco-fundamentalism. It is a view of man as pestilence. No one who holds that view, or has held that view, or who has publicly endorsed serious consideration of that view, should be in a position of influence in our government.

There is a deep and disturbing irony in your appointment of Dr. Holdren as Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The irony, sir, is this: Dr. Holdren endorsed the serious consideration of radical measures — including involuntary sterilization and abortion — to cull mankind. And he was not an equal-opportunity culler. He betrayed a particular animus to children conceived of third world parentage to young mothers of limited means. He asserted that they were a burden that we dare not bear — for the sake of humanity and for the sake of the Earth. He implored us to ensure that these children were never given life.

He meant you.

Sincerely,

Michael Egnor, M.D.

Orality

2009-07-22T16:58:00.001-07:00

Dan,

In response to your comment earlier, I am pasting an essay from Dr. Greg Boyd that addresses the issue if oral tradition (not exhaustively). I would urge you to check out his research, if you are interested in a more up to date perspective on transmission of the Bible

One of the standard tests historians put to ancient documents to assess their veracity is self-consistency. Generally speaking, fabricated accounts tend to include more inconsistencies than truthful accounts. Hence, the absence of inner contradictions contributes to a positive estimation of the document’s historical veracity. In the case of the four Gospels, we must ask this question not only in relation to each individual Gospel but, perhaps even more significantly, of the Gospels’ relationship with one another, for they each purport to tell essentially the same story.
Now, it is frequently alleged that, as a matter of fact, the Gospels contain contradictions within themselves and with one another. It is not my goal in this essay to address these particular allegations. This has already been carried out by a number of very capable scholars (1). My goal in this essay is more general. What I’ll rather attempt to do is demonstrate that the apparent contradictions within and between the Gospels becomes inconsequential to our assessment of their veracity once they are understood as written versions of oral recitations of an oral tradition and thus interpreted within what’s called an “oral register” (against the background of an oral culture). To the contrary, the level of variation in and between the Gospels is precisely what we should expect given that these works are intended to be oral recitations of an oral tradition. (I want to acknowledge that I am immensely indebted to my good friend Paul Eddy whose incredible research uncovered what I’m about to share regarding oral traditions. For a full account of this research, see Eddy, Boyd The Jesus Legend (Baker, 2007).
The Discrepancies Within and Between the Gospels. No informed person denies that there are apparent contradictions within and between the four Gospels. These apparent conflicts can be grouped into four general categories:
1) Instances of apparently mutually exclusive reports. For example, did Jesus tell his disciples to take a staff and sandals as Mark reports (Mk 6:8-9), or not to take them, as Matthew reports (Matt 10:9-10)?
2) Instances within a Gospel where it appears that one historical event has been recorded as two separate events. (These are called ‘doublets”). Perhaps the most famous example of this is the two differing accounts of Jesus supernaturally feeding the multitudes (e.g. Mark 6:33-44 and 8:1-9). Many critical scholars argue these two stories are actually two varying accounts of the same story.
3) Unexplainable omissions or additions within parallel passages. For example, Mark and Luke record Jesus giving an unqualified prohibition against divorce (Mark’s [10:11-12; Luke 16:18) while Matthew adds an exception clause ( Matthew’s 5:32; 19:9).
4) Chronological conflicts. For example, the episode of Jesus cursing the fig-tree and teaching his disciples it’s lesson occurs over two-days in Mark (Mk 11:12-14, 20-25) while Matthew collapses this into one instantaneous event (Mt 21:18-22).
The question is, do conflicts such as these constitute “contradictions” that should undermine our assessment of the historical veracity of these works or can most of these sorts of conflicts be plausibly shown to merely apparent? In other words, can these apparent contradictions be harmonized? While I will not here attempt such harmonizations, as I said above, I offer five broad considerations that I believe render an affirmative answer to these questions more likely than not.
A Change in Attitude. First, it’s important to note that none of these apparent conflicts have been discovered recently. To the contrary, thinkers have known about since the second century and have offered ways of resolving them (2). Clearly, therefore, the insistence on the part of many contemporary New Testament critics, including all legendary-Jesus theorists, that these conflicts are irresolvable and thus undermine the historical trustworthiness of the Gospels is not rooted in any newly discovered facts. Nor is it rooted in any new evidence demonstrating that the proposed ways of harmonizing these conflicts are all implausible. Rather, this insistence is rooted in a relatively new attitude many scholars bring to the data.
More specifically, proposed ways of reconciling conflicts within and between the Gospels have become implausible to many contemporary scholars not necessarily because they are inherently so, but because the naturalistic worldview that has been embraced by these modern scholars renders them so. That is, because the Gospels contain miracles, which the naturalistic worldview disallows, these scholars bring to these works a skeptical attitude that renders attempts to resolve their apparent contradictions superfluous.
To come at this from a slightly different direction, one only attempts to resolve contradictions within and between documents if they believe it’s at least possible the works in question are generally trustworthy. If one rather has already concluded that a set of documents are not generally trustworthy, then the appearance of contradictions simply confirms what one assumes they already knew: namely, that the documents in question are not reliable. Indeed, in the case of the Gospels, many critics assume that attempts to reconcile apparent conflicts is always theologically motivated (viz. trying to defend a conception of biblical inspiration), and thus cannot be judged as representing good, historical-critical scholarship.
The prejudicial nature of this skeptical stance is shown in the fact that, from a strictly historiographical perspective, the apparent conflicts between the Gospels is completely normal. Rarely in history do we find multiple witnesses to an event that do not contain apparent contradictions. As Gilbert Garraghan explains in his Guide to Historical Method, “almost any critical history that discusses the evidence for important statements will furnish examples of discrepant or contradictory accounts and the attempts which are made to reconcile them (3).
From discrepant reports of Alexander the Great by Arrian and Plutarch to the differing accounts of Hannibal crossing the Alps by Livy and Polybius all the way up to conflicts between reports found every week in our various news magazines, discrepancies are the norm – which means attempts at harmonization accounts must be the rule as we try to discern “what actually happened.” Because of this, the standard historiographical assumption is that conflicting data that is purportedly historical deserves to be read as sympathetically as possible, with attempts to harmonize the conflicting data carried out before one dismisses the data as unreliable on the basis of these apparent conflicts. The only apparent reason legendary-Jesus theorist don’t extend this same courtesy to the Gospels is because they have already decided – for metaphysical, not historiographical, reasons – that the Gospels aren’t trustworthy. And this, I argue, is prejudicial.
The Fragmentary Nature of Oral Recitations. Second, it’s vital we remember that the Gospels were written in the context of an orally dominated culture in which written played a minor role. In contexts like this, traditions are passed on orally typically through the medium of an oral performer reciting some aspect of the oral tradition before a community of listeners. The Gospels must be understood as written versions of an oral recitation.
Now, if searching for ways of harmonizing apparently conflicting accounts is generally warranted when trying to discern “what actually happened,” it is all the more so when one is dealing with apparent conflicts between written oral recitations, such as the Gospels. Recent orality studies have demonstrated that oral recitations, whether written or not, always presuppose a much broader tradition that is well-known to the listening audience. This broader tradition forms what has been called the “mental text” of the community, and it forms the assumed context within which all shared episodes of the oral tradition, written or performed, make sense.
For this reason, oral performances, whether written out or not, employ a good deal of “metonymy,” which is “a mode of signification wherein a part stands for the whole” (4). Hence, most of what is intended to be communicated by tradents (oral performers) within the community is not explicitly stated in any given oral or written performance. They typically “[record] the relevant facts very partially… relying on a background of memory and witnesses” (5). And in light of these considerations we must conclude we will always misunderstand works written with an oral register if we treat them as if they were modern, autonomous, self-sufficient works.
Rosalind Thomas makes this point well when he notes that ancient documents “presuppose knowledge which is simply remembered and not written down.” Far from being autonomous works, as texts with literate registers tend to be, ancient works “cannot perform their task without backing from non-written communication.” Hence, she concludes,
It becomes difficult to separate oral and written modes in any meaningful sense except in the most basic one (i.e., what was written down and what was not). It is surely only our modern confidence in and obsession with the written text which see documents as entirely self-sufficient” (6).
The implications of these observations are significant when it comes to assessing the apparent conflicts within and between the Gospels. It means that to treat these works responsibly we have to try to imagine the broader tradition the audience and author shared and within which the individual, fragmentary, elliptical accounts were originally understood. And this means we have to try to imagine a broader oral context within which the apparent conflicts between accounts can be harmonized. In this light, we must conclude that the refusal of skeptical scholars to acknowledge the legitimacy of attempting to harmonize the Gospel accounts is not only prejudicial; it is fundamentally opposed to the very nature of the Gospel texts themselves.
These observations of course don’t imply that we can simply assume that if we had access to the broader oral tradition of the early Christians all apparent conflicts would be resolved. From a strictly historiographical perspective, we have to concede that it’s possible that various traditions gradually modified their contents in the course of transmission in ways that simply contradict other traditions, even by ancient oral standards. But it does imply that modern scholars shouldn’t assume that what appears to us to be a contradiction wouldn’t be reconciled if we had access to the broader oral traditions the written Gospels draw on and feed back into. And, therefore, it implies we shouldn’t dismiss plausible proposals as to how apparent conflicts might be harmonized by appealing to the broader, presupposed, oral tradition shared by the Gospel’s original audience. To the contrary, as we’ve said, to read the Gospels non-anachronistically, we have to try to imagine this broader shared background.
On Remembering Things, Not Words. Third, orality studies have consistently demonstrated that focus of memory in oral traditions is generally on things, not words. As we’ve said, oral performers are typically given significant leeway in how they retell a story, so long as they convey the essence of the story accurately. This means that we can expect to find the essential voice of Jesus in the early Church’s oral tradition, but we cannot suppose early Christians would have been invested in preserving the exact words of Jesus. It also suggests that we are completely missing the mark if we suppose there to be any genuine conflict between the different ways the Gospels record Jesus’ teachings and/or the events of Jesus life. Modern, literate minded people might find a contradiction between one Gospel author recording Jesus telling his disciples to wear sandals (Mk 6:9) while the others have him forbidding them (Mt 10: 10; Lk 10:4), but its very unlikely any ancient person would have been concerned in the least with such a variance in detail. For the essential point of Jesus’ teaching is the same in all three accounts – namely, the disciples were to trust God for their provisions while doing missionary work (7)
Schematic Wholes Over Discrete Facts. Fourth, and closely related to this, we now know that oral traditions typically place far more emphasis on schematic wholes than on details. (8) Rudolf Bultmann and most other early form critics assumed that oral traditions could only pass on small units of tradition, not extended narratives. But they had it exactly wrong. Generally speaking, explicit and implicit extended narratives functioning as integrated schematic complexes are precisely the sorts of things that are viewed as most essential to oral traditions. What is not so essential is the precise way events are ordered and remembered in any given oral performance.
A. Sowayan’s insightful study of Arabic historical narrative in the oral mode is instructive at this point. Sowayan demonstrated that orally transmitted narratives are designed as suwalif – meaning, literally, “ to have happened in the past.” In sharp contrast to the widespread assumption of western scholars in the past that oral traditions tend to lack genuine historical interest, Sowayan has shown that the traditional narratives he studied were centered on “historical events and biographical or social circumstances connected with the immediate, or remote, past” (9). Yet, he has also demonstrated that the order in which events are presented in any given oral performance has more to do with the “process of remembering” on the part of the performer than it does with the order in which events actually took place. “[A]s one remembers” he says, , “one narrates” (10). “Once the narrative begins,” he adds, “it can be developed in any of several possible directions, depending upon the performance context” (11).
Sowayan fleshes out the nature of these historical, oral recitations when he continues;
…a long narrative is a cluster of smaller narratives which are imbedded and interlinked with each other. The swarming of the various narratives to the narrator’s mind as he starts, and the disentanglement of the various episodes as they come in the way of one another and crowd in [into?] his breast . . . can be likened to the flocking of thirsty camels to the drinking-trough . . . . At times, stories come in the way of one another and the narrator may find himself compelled to suspend an ongoing story in the middle to tell a different one . . . . This is because narratives are plentiful and interconnected (12).
Numerous orality studies have found a similar pattern in a wide variety of cultural settings (13). Unless they are familiar with it, this sort of non-linear, creative flexibility in how material is presented may strike literary minded people as involving historical inaccuracies and contradictions. But, as a matter of fact, such a conclusion would merely evidence how thoroughly these modern people had misunderstood the nature of oral performances in orally-dominated cultures.
It is no accident that the Gospels each exhibit this interesting balance between essential fixity and creative flexibility. As oral tradents, the Gospel authors freely rearrange events and sayings. They sometimes seem to collate and/or divide up events (as we earlier noted Matthew doing with Mark’s version of the fig-tree cursing). At times they seem to intentionally do this for topical reasons. But, for all we know, at other times they may do so simply because this is how the material presented itself to them as they were composing their oral recitation. In any event, by the standards of orally dominated cultures, the fact that the way events and sayings are ordered is markedly different in each Gospel does not constitute a contradiction by the stands appropriate to oral traditions and does not in the least compromise the genuineness of the historical interest or capabilities of the Gospel authors. To think otherwise, as many legendary-Jesus theorists do, is to think anachronistically.
.
Jesus as an Itinerant Preacher. A fifth and final implication of orality studies for our understanding of apparent conflicts within and between the Gospels centers on the itinerate ministry of Jesus himself. Because the modern critical study of the Gospels has been driven by a literary paradigm, insufficient attention has been paid to the realities and constraints that would have characterized Jesus’ traveling ministry an orally dominated culture (14). Only recently have a few modern scholars begun to seriously work through the implications of the fact that Jesus’ ministry would have of necessity been characterized by multiple oral performances of the same – or at least very similar – material.
Werner Kelber hits the mark when he notes that “…reiteration and variation of words and stories must be assumed for Jesus’ own proclamation. Multiple, variable renditions, while observable in tradition, are highly plausible in Jesus own oral performance” (15). N.T. Wright notes the “enormous implications… this [observation] has for synoptic criticism” when he argues that “[w]ithin the peasant oral culture of his day, Jesus must have left behind him, not one or two isolated traditions, but a veritable mare’s nest of anecdotes, and also of sentences, aphorisms, rhythmic sayings, memorable stories with local variations, [etc.]” (16).
This implies that, in all likelihood, many of the variations of Jesus’ teachings found in the Gospels – variations that modern literate minded scholars tend to explain by appealing to the different redactional purposes of each individual author — are probably better explained simply as oral variations performed by Jesus himself (17). This also likely explains the “doublets” found in the Gospels. An itinerate preacher like Jesus would have said and done very similar things in different locations at different times. To reject such an explanation, as many skeptical scholars do, is to “simply have no historical imagination for what an itinerant ministry, within a peasant culture, would look like” (18).
To conclude, it is clear that by the standards of a literary paradigm, the Gospels indeed contain “contradictions.” What we have been arguing, however, is that evaluating them by these modern standards is anachronistic. Judged by the conventions and constraints of their own orally-dominated cultural context and read sympathetically with an imaginative appreciation for the broad oral tradition they were written to express and feed back into, the Gospels are shown to exhibit the sort of broad internal consistency that suggests that the authors both intended to faithfulyl record the essential aspects of Jesus’ life and that they were successful at doing so.
———————–
(1) See, for example, C. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1987) 113-52; S. L. Bridge, Getting the Gospels: Understanding the New Testament Accounts of Jesus’ Life (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004); and R. H. Stein, Interpreting Puzzling Texts in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996) parts I - II.
(2) See R. M. Grant, The Earliest Lives of Jesus (New York: Harper, 1961).
(3) G. Garraghan, A Guide to Historical Method (New York: Fordham, 1946) 314. See also J. Topolski, Methodology of History (Warsaw: PWN – Polish Scientific Publishers, 1976) 471-3.
(4) J. M. Foley, Immanent Art: From Structure to Meaning in Traditional Oral Epic (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991) 7.
(5) R. Thomas, Literacy and Orality, in Ancient Greece (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992) 76-7.
(6) Ancient documents “presuppose knowledge which is simply remembered and not written down.” Far from being autonomous works, as texts with literate registers tend to be, ancient works “cannot perform their task without backing from non-written communication.” Hence, she concludes, “ It becomes difficult to separate oral and written modes in any meaningful sense except in the most basic one (i.e., what was written down and what was not). It is surely only our modern confidence in and obsession with the written text which see documents as entirely self-sufficient.” Thomas, Literacy and Orality, 76.
(7) A point Augustine recognized in his harmony long ago; see Stein, Interpreting Puzzling Texts, 26-8.
(8) For a clear explication of this phenomenon drawn from contemporary Malay culture see A. Sweeney, A Full Hearing: Orality and Literacy in the Malay World (Berkeley; University of California Pressm 1987), esp. 8-12, 272, 297-8, 305.
(9) S. A. Sowayan, The Arabian Oral Historical Narrative: An Ethnographic and Linguistic Analysis (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1992) 19.
(10) Ibid., 22.
(11) Op. cit.
(12) Ibid., 23.
(13) See, for example, Robin Law’s study within the Yoruba. “How Truly Traditional is Our Traditional History? The Case of Samuel Johnson and the Recording of Yoruba Oral Tradition.” History in Africa 11 (1984) 198.
(14) A point forcefully made by Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress) 170-1.
(15) Kelber, “Jesus and Tradition: Words in Time, Words in Space,” Semeia 65 (1994), 146.
(16) Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 170.
(17) Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 170, see also 632-3.
(18) Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 171.

Stuff You Find

2009-07-18T12:16:00.000-07:00

As I was going through some of my dad's papers the other day I came across a letter he sent to a client in 1979. It truly provided some much needed hilarity. I thought I would post it here for fun.

Dear Bob,

I know you are always looking for sound opportunities for investment.

I don't know if you would be interested in this, but I thought I would mention it to you because it could be a real "sleeper" in making a lot of money with very little investment.

A group of us are considering investing in a large cat ranch near Nogales City, Mexico. It is our purpose to start rather small, with about one million cats. Each cat averages about twelve kittens per year; each skin to be sold $.20 for the white ones and up to $.40 for the black. This will give us twelve million cat skins per year to sell at an average price of around$.32, making our revenue about three million dollars a year. This really averages out to ten thousand dollars a day excluding Sundays and holidays.

A good Mexican cat man can skin about 50 cats per day at a wage of $2.15 a day. It only takes 663 men to operate the ranch, so the net profit would be over eight thousand two hundred dollars per day.

Now the cats would be fed on rats exclusively. Rats multiply four times as fast as cats. We would start a rat ranch adjacent to our cat farm. If we start with a million rats we will have four rats per cat each day. The rats will be fed on the carcasses of the cats that we skin. This will give each cat a quarter of a cat. You can see by this that the buisness is a clean operation-self supporting and really automatic througout. The cats will eat the rats, and the rats will eat the cats, we get the skins.

Let me know if you are interested, as you can imagine, I am rather particular who I want to get into this, and want the fewest investors possible.

May I hear from you soon?

Yours truly,

Hope this is good for some laughs.

Bubba v. Dan

2009-07-10T20:32:00.000-07:00

Over at Marshall's Dan and Bubba have been involved in a protracted dialogue. In it Bubba has asked Dan a series of questions, it seems as though Dan has not answered. It is my hope to provide a place for Bubba to restate his questions and hope that Dan will respond. I believe that one thing that caused some confusion was the number of different topics, it is my hope that this will avoid that. I would like to see some sort of agreement on some ground rules to keep things focused, and I would like (read will delete) comments from anyone other than Dan and Bubba.

In essentials unity...

2009-04-11T08:28:00.001-07:00

Over at Marshall Art's Dan asked a good question, to which I responded. To avoid going off topic I'm going to copy them here as a platform for future discussion if anyone is inclined.

Dan's question is as follows
And so, my question to you, Craig, is what do we do when two Christians disagree about an action? Do we disfellowship? Do we call names? Do we demonize? Or, do we live under God's grace, saying with Paul, "Who am I to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls; and stand he will, for the Lord is able to make him stand."

My response was.

As to your second question, that is the crux of the matter isn't it. The answer is long, complicated and playing out in a number of denominations ("mine" included) across the country. I'll try for a short version so as not to go too far astray, and we can continue elsewhere if you want. Here goes.

If the basic nature of the disagreement is rooted in authority of scripture (as I believe this to be) then at some point is would be appropriate to go so far as to disassociate (officially) from a part of the Church. I'm not sure name calling and demonizing (not that anyone on your side would stoop so low) is productive, but at some point it is possible for a doctrine or teaching to go beyond the bounds of Christianity into heresy territory. So I think that it would be possible to label someone a heretic without it being considered simply name calling. So, I guess my answer would be maybe.

Any thoughts?

Three Questions

2008-08-31T10:14:00.000-07:00

This morning during the sermon a question was asked. That question sparked two others. So for anyone who stops by, 3 questions. I'd love to hear some thoughts.

How do we trust God when our perception of reality is shattered?

Why do we trust our perception of reality more than God's?

Why is service such a big part of recalibrating our perception of reality?

Discuss.

Can't Help Myself

2008-04-11T15:13:00.000-07:00

I just can't seem to stop commenting over in Shuckytown (won't you take me to...), maybe someday I'll learn.

Comments!!

2008-04-05T14:48:00.000-07:00

Now that people are commenting, I might be encouraged to actually post some stuff. C'mon, you all don't want that. Seriously, thanks for the comments.

The Shucky Meme

2008-03-24T09:49:00.000-07:00

Since I'm not important enough to get tagged with this I thought I'd take a shot anyway.

What is your earliest memory of being distinctly Presbyterian?

I have attended and been a member of a Presbyterian for my entire life. I think the point at which I remember being distinctly Presbyterian was when I realized that my church was not.

On what issue/question should the PC(USA) spend LESS energy and time?
I think we should spend less time trying to control what others do, and coercing people into a false unity.

On what issue/question should the PC(USA) spend MORE energy and time?
Use the authority given us to “Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

If you could have the PC(USA) focus on one passage of scripture for a entire year, what would it be?
“Jesus Said to her, “ I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes this will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
“Yes Lord” she told Him, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who was to come into the world”

Do YOU believe this.

Other suggestions: 1 Corinthians 15

If the PC(USA) were an animal what would it be and why?
The PCUSA is a dinosaur

Extra Credit: Jesus shows up at General Assembly this year, what does he say to the Presbyterian Church (USA)?
6Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7If you really knew me, you would know[a] my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him."

, “ I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes this will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God
But, mostly I think he’d just sob at how screwed up this part of His church has become

Enjoy

My Third Post

2008-03-11T16:30:00.001-07:00

Thank heavens, the Shuckites weren't actually calling me a NAZI, they were calling someone else a NAZI. Which, of course, makes it all better. Not only that, it was just my (rhetorical) question (that someone took seriously) that was stupid. What a load off my mind. Around my house we don't use the word stupid. Anyway, it's just more fun at the House of Shuck.

"What a bunch of Maroons"
Bugs Bunny

2 posts in one day

2008-03-10T11:57:00.000-07:00

First, I told you not to expect too much from this blog, and I was right. I didn't however, think spelling was going to be the problem. My apologies, I'll try to do better.

Second, on my very first post at Shucky's I was called an NAZI and stupid. This is working out better than I thought.

John Shuck Made Me Do This

2008-03-10T08:05:00.000-07:00

In order to post a comment on John Shuck's blog, you must be a Google blogger. Although I do not have either the time or desire to blog, I have established this blog so I can occaisionally comment on John Shuck's blog. This seems like a lack of inclusiveness to me, but I'm normally not an inclusive guy. Except for the homeless, East Africans, and Haitians. Maybe Shuck gets some kind of royalty from Google for pimping their service, who knows. Anyway, that's my story, welcome to my blog don't expect much from it and you won't be dissapointed.