Thinking Christian

There’s somethin’ strange goin’ on here. This is the third time I’ve had the privilege of hosting the Christian Carnival. The first time, my blog broke down completely just about the time I was scheduled to write and post the Carnival. It was completely inaccessible for reading and for administrating for several hours. Well, that happened again yesterday, and it took about eight hours of work on my end with help from tech support at the web host to solve it this time. Is there a pattern here?

Well, I’m not going to read too much into that, and I’m certainly glad to be hosting this time! But these incidents remind me of a song called “Broken Things,” written many years ago by a Campus Crusade for Christ musician who had taken a tour in the Philippines. Somebody she saw there, on a street or in a shop, was looking to buy broken things so he could repair and re-sell them. In her song she asked the question, “Do you know one who buys broken things?” And the answer of course was yes: we know Jesus Christ. He came to pay the price for our sins, in a figurative sense to buy broken people, to give them life, heal them, and set them free. That includes you and me.

Everything in the Christian life is about knowing and celebrating the One who did that for us, or about learning what it needs to be a broken person being healed and entering into a new life, or helping others understand how Christ does this. So this is the “Broken Things” edition of the Christian Carnival, with an emphasis on how we get “repaired.”

Learning About Christ and His Word

• Anne, blogging at Weekend Fisher, asks an interesting question about the Bible:

How much does a word cloud tell you about the main point of a writing? Have you ever seen a word cloud for one of the gospels?

See one outcome at Gospel of Mark: Word Cloud.

• Jeremy Pierce presents Contemporary Units of Measurement in Bible Translations posted at Parableman. Translation isn’t such a bad thing — it’s one of the heart strategies of missions, after all!

Learning About and Living Our New Life in Christ

• Free Money Finance tells about how we often “fail to realize that our money is not our own. It is God’s money and we are each just a steward of a certain amount.” Also in More Thoughts on Tithing and Giving: why we may be afraid to give, and why it’s good under God to give nevertheless.

• Richard H. Anderson presents Forgiveness of Sins according to Luke, at dokeo kago grapho soi kratistos Theophilos, including this important note about Christ’s redeeming our brokenness:

Without the salvation historical work of Jesus Christ, forgiveness is impossible, but without human μετάνοια (repentance), it can not be realized.

• Jennifer in OR, at Diary of 1, recommends, Don’t ask for just a few. Instead, with a message from the life of Elisha, she says,

…. Seek help from wise people, follow God’s precise instructions even if they don’t make sense, and watch the blessings flow. He cares for you.

• Simplyeddie says we can all be Making a Difference, especially by living with love and by concentrating on what’s really important. It’s posted at Simple Life In Christ.

• At Bounded Irrationality, Econ Grad Student Doug speaks of Sound and Fury:

When do our actions have meaning? When do our lives have meaning? I look where the Bible addresses those questions and the secular view on those questions.

• Sherry Early reviews a “Weird. Nightmare-ish. Imaginative. Chestertonian.” novel, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G.K. Chesterton [one of my favorite authors, though I haven't read this book yet]. Her review is posted at Semicolon.

• Thom speaks of celebrations — and distortions of celebrations — Wedding, a Microcosm of Community See it at Everyday Liturgy.

• This week at Light Along the Journey John decides that after toning up his body with his “Wii fit” he wants a video game (or maybe something else?) to tone up his soul in his post “I Want a Wii Life.” He realizes, though, that he can’t fix everything up quite the same way!

• Henry Neufeld combines story and message in Justine and the Prophets, posted at Jevlir Caravansary:

The God-Talk Club was gathered at the cafe, and everyone was fairly quiet….

They end up in a pretty fascinating conversation about a “prophet” showing up at church.

• Jody Neufeld builds a message around a different story, Daniel in the Lion’s Den, at Jody’s Devotionals. Sometimes what looks weak isn’t broken at all:

They thought they had found Daniel’s weakness. He was a man of faith in an unseen god. Has anyone ever suggested to you that “having faith in God is for weak-minded people”?

Helping Others Know and Understand Christ

• Theresa Twogood at Olin e-Publishing will let you wonder for a while what she means by A New and Unique Philosophy?, but I’ll give you a hint: some attempts at repair only hide what’s broken, they don’t really fix it.

• Elementaryhistoryteacher takes note of some friends who have left home to help others in Peru learn about Christ. She asks, Would You…Could You Do This? at Got Bible?.

• Brian Russell of the Real Meal Blog offers Illustrating Missional (Re)Alignment. This essay explores the need for Christ followers to realign continually with the mission of God in the World.

• Rodney Olsen presents Antony Flew says There Is A God posted at RodneyOlsen.net:

The world’s most notorious atheist has looked at the evidence and has changed his mind. His book, There Is A God, outlines what he understands as the compelling case for the existence of God.

• And finally, my own entry from Thinking Christian is about Truth in the Fire: C.S. Lewis and the Pursuit of Truth Today. The very concept of Truth is under attack, and it matters greatly to our life in Christ and to our witness.

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It’s Christian Carnival Time!

We begin with a collection of posts having to do with Biblical understanding and application:

At Light Along the Journey, John looks at the nature of the faith that transformed the life of Bartimaeus in the post Blind Faith.

Richard H. Anderson presents A Brief History of the Covenant Relationship, posted at dokeo kago grapho soi kratistos Theophilos.

Tom Fuerst, at Theology for the Masses, discusses Jesus, the Syrophoenician Woman, and a Reversal of Violence.

Also from Theology for the Masses, but by a different author, Henry Imler: Justice.

And again, Cheapham presents On creation posted at Theology for the Masses. (Check out the comments for some thoughtful ideas, too.)

Rey from the Bible Archive wades in the deep end of the pool with thoughts on Psalm 110, Melchizedek and Christian Theology.

From Weekend Fisher Blog: Heart, Mind, Soul, and Strength. One thing God has spoken; a look at the basis for the classical Jewish view that a verse may legitimately have multiple levels of meaning.

We continue with further discussions on the Christian life:

Rich Vosler presents Pruning makes growth for new life posted at Sales Training Tips.

James DeLelys has a parable to tell, Farming, at Healing Through Words.

FMF presents To Tithe or Not? Being Rich Toward God posted at Free Money Finance.

The Evangelical Ecologist provides us with a Book Review – One Month to Live.

Thoughts on how we live it all out through church:

Do you really know what is going on in your church’s youth department? You should visit sometime…you might be shocked! Diane R presents Your Church’s Youth Department? posted at Crossroads: Where Faith and Inquiry Meet.

Lent is a traditional season of repentance. Walking the cross is a common Western tradition of liturgical repentance. “A more penitential liturgical expression is the Orthodox Canon of St. Andrew” … which in this post Mark Olson commends to any and all Christians: On Repentance and Lent posted at Pseudo-Polymath.

Thom presents The Importance of Silence posted at Everyday Liturgy, commenting on noisy church services, and offering thoughts on the place of silence in church.

Next, we move into ethics, theology, and apologetics:

Ali presents Stop Discrimination Against People With Down’s Syndrome. posted at Kiwi and an Emu: a post dealing with the abortion of fetuses who likely have Down’s Syndrome. Written from an Australasian perspective – “applicable to Americans,” says Ali, “but not at all related to ‘certain policital issues’ over there.”

Often Christians sidestep or give pat answers to the problem of evil. Doug looks at the possibility that evil was necessary: Necessary Evil posted at Bounded Irrationality.

“More people have slaughtered in religious wars than all other wars combined.” John asks, Do you think this statement is true? War and Religion posted at Brain Cramps for God.

Jeremy Pierce presents Muslims Worshiping But Not Worshiping God posted at Parableman. Do Muslims worship God, i.e. the same God Christians worship? This post argues that the answer is more complicated than a yes or no, but technically the answer is yes the way many people mean the question, even if that’s misleading in certain contexts (i.e. when people mean something else).

ChrisB asks, Is Systematic Theology Bad? posted at Homeward Bound: The Christian religion is certainly more than a set of facts. But there are facts that need to be kept straight. It’s an important tool in the Christian faith, and its occasional misuse should not deter us from its regular use.

At Thinking Christian I take a look at an approaching controversy over the Intelligent Design-related film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, in a series beginning with Expelled: The Pre-Controversy.

And we close with some refreshingly creative-arts related topics:

At the Seek Truth Blog, Brett Martenson has a poem for us, A Long Winter’s Psalm, lamenting the current weather (in the US midwest anyway) and alluding to deeper, spiritual yearnings.

Henry Neufeld discusses Learning from Stories posted at Jevlir Caravansary: using stories from various perspectives in teaching–whether you agree with the characters or not.

Annette presents a hymn she likes; she says, “It’s one worth getting to know:” Saved By Grace posted at Fish and Cans.

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God created us for relationship with Him, and with genuine moral significance as part of our makeup. We turned away from Him and broke that relationship. Our connection to the true source of life and love was broken, and death and alienation entered our experience. This we learn from Genesis 1 through 3, as covered in the first two posts in this series (see the Series list below).

The first chapters of Genesis illustrate God’s holiness and justice without actually using those terms. The full picture of these facets of God’s character emerges later in His word. God’s holiness speaks of his purity, his righteousness, his perfect moral character. It also connotates separateness from all that is evil or impure. Habakkuk 1:13 says God’s eyes are too pure even to look on evil. It’s metaphorical, obviously, but the point is that God cannot in any way approve evil. In Psalm 5 we read,

“For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you.”

God’s justice is that which demands that right be rewarded and wrong be punished; that moral actions have fitting moral consequences; that we do indeed “reap what we sow.” It is on the one hand a source of tremendous hope for those who have been oppressed or wronged. On the other hand it stands in front of all who have done wrong, which is each one of us.

The consequences of Adam and Eve’s sin were given to them out of God’s righteous holiness and justice. (And mankind has been railing against holiness and justice ever since.) This is not all there is to say about God’s character, for He is also a God of mercy, compassion, love, and forgiveness. How he can express both mercy and justice will be the subject of a future post in this series.

Meanwhile we need to take note of further results of the first humans’ rebellion against God. Not only were they separated from God, not only did they become subject to death, they also experienced the curse of their sin. We’ve all been experiencing it since.

For the woman the curse mostly had to do with pain relating to children and men. For the man it had to do with the painful frustration of labor and production. The world would now fight back against these rebels; and people in their alienation would fight each other. When we speak later of what Christ has done for us we will touch on reconciliation between people, which begins when people relate to one another in Christ. Reconciliation with the frustrations of the natural world is yet to come, in a future state after the return of Christ.

The tempter (who later in the Bible we understand to be Satan) was also cursed, and in that curse the first hint of a promised redemption comes to us: the seed of the woman would crush his head. The seed (offspring) of the woman–notably not the seed of the man–was the coming Christ, born of a virgin, whose work would include destroying the works of Satan.

Now, I am fully aware that this exposition will raise questions and objections from some loyal non-believing readers here. My purpose in this post, as in the previous two, has been to present a brief outline of what we know about the root of humanity’s dignity and brokenness, as background for explaining what Christ has done about it. You who may question or object to this, I ask to read this for what it is: an exposition of a belief, a viewpoint on the condition of humanity.

I believe it is a true viewpoint; I know that you do not. I ask that you approach this for understanding and not primarily for dispute. You who object to Christian beliefs, this is your chance for a deeper understanding of their source. I hope your questions will be that: requests for clarification. This is not the time for me to prove to you that Genesis 1-3 tell a true account of where we came from. It is a time to focus on the account itself and what it means, taken for what it is.

Part of a Series: What Christ Does For Us

• Part 1: Our Roots In God’s Plan
• Part 2: Broken Roots
• Part 3: The Extent of Brokenness
• Part 4: Restorations
• Part 5: Who Christ Is
• Part 6: Among Us, Loving Us
• Part 7: Showing How to Live
• Part 8: Death and Resurrection
• Part 9: The Cross, Again
• Part 10: The Resurrection, Again
• Part 11: Life in Christ

Related: How To Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions — a post that elicited a short question, to which I’m writing a long answer

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