AAR/SBL tear down

Usually the tear down starts to occur after closing on the last day. Not this year! Starting at about 11:15, you could see people starting to tear down their booths, and you could hear the sound of tape guns being used all around the hall, Eisenbrauns included. We all had flights to catch that left around 4:00 PM. Normally, tear down takes about 3 hours and the exhibit hall closes at noon. Do the math. Catching a 4:00 flight is pretty tight! Besides, their were very few people in the exhibit hall who were buying anything.

Here are a few pictures of tear down to give you an idea of what happens after the show:




OK, so the show wasn't over yet :) One of the first things they do is pull up the aisle carpet so that they can bring out the skids.




We came with 4 tall skids. We left with 2 skids, plus a half skid. One of the skids is display materials, so we always have that.

AAR/SBL last day

I have to post this picture, since it is the most extreme case of book addiction I saw this year (although it wasn't as bad as I've ever seen):



This guy and a friend of his were repacking all of his book purchases; it took them about an hour. They ended up with about 5 boxes that were stuffed to the gills. He told me he would also end up carrying some in his suitcase and carry-on.

AAR/SBL day 3

Another good day. I was in and out of the booth all day, meeting with vendors. I really enjoy this, as over the years some of us have become good friends and share far more than book information. It is always nice to hear how their kids are doing and what else, good and bad, is going on in their lives. Some of them even tell me that they read my blog; I'm flattered!

In the booth, I was able to meet some more bloggers and e-listers and finally put faces to names. That, too, is gratifying. In a virtual world much is lost, to have a face and a short time of live interaction to peg to a person when I see a virtual communication helps make it more personal.

Tuesday is the last day, and it is only a half-day, although it starts at 8:00 instead of 8:30. We have an unusually early flight, leaving at 4:00, which only gives us 2 hours to tear down a booth that takes over 8 hours to build. So, we started early, taking down the display elements that are the hardest to do once the show is over.

Here is a before and after picture:


This one is a bit dark; they had shut off most of the lights by the time we finished. It was Dave's idea to put the Bridging the Gap book in the "gap."

AAR/SBL Day 2

Day 2. Today started out busier than yesterday, with more customers at the booth. That is a good thing :) I had an appointment with the SBL people to get our booths for next year. Even with the split, we are still taking 6 booths (we have 8 booths this year). We were probably about the eighth or ninth vendor to pick, which I guess is pretty good, but already some of the spots I wanted were taken. We ended up taking 3 on each side of the aisle in the 500 aisle, which, if you remember Boston's exhibit hall, is a thoroughfare going from the exhibit hall to the Sheraton. OK, enough details, right? You'll see it next year.

I mentioned yesterday that I was hoping to meet with the bibliobloggers for lunch, since my 12:00 appointment had to cancel. Well, as I was afraid of, my 11:00 ran until 11:50. I ran up to the front of the book sales area, but it was too late; they had already left. I talked to Kevin Wilson later, and he told me there were over 20 there, and he showed me the list. Very nice; wish I could have made it. Maybe next year...

I was supposed to meet with Michael from Eerdmans at 5:00 today, but he had to cancel. We were trying to reschedule, standing in the middle of the aisle comparing free times. Jim Miller from NEGS was watching and listening to us and all of a sudden he started laughing. Michael and I looked at him and asked what was so funny. He said he wished he had a camera and tape recorder to record our conversation. One of us would give a time, and the other would say, nope, won't work. Then that person would give a time and the other would say, nope, won't work. This went on for about 3-4 minutes. I bet it did sound pretty funny! Anyway, we did manage to get a time set for tomorrow, but only half as long as we had originally planned. I just hope that neither of us has the previous appointments run long, or we won't meet at all.

I spent tonight with Gary and Catherine, friends from U of Chicago days. We hadn't seen each other in over 10 years, although we communicate regularly via e-mail and phone. It was a wonderful time; we went to a nice Thai restaurant and had a leisurely meal and then sat and talked until about 11:30. They had to drive back up to Ventura, outside L.A., yet tonight, otherwise we would probably still be talking. It was great catching up in person on what God is doing and has done in their lives.

I forgot to use my camera today. In fact, I totally forgot I even had it along. I saw some great ones that would have won me the Jim West/Chris Tilling prize, hands down. :)

Well, tomorrow is another long day, with a breakfast meeting with the folks at CBOTS/CNBTS about being their North American distributor. This is something we have wanted for a long time and I hope it works out for their sake, as well as ours and yours—the book buyers. They do some good stuff that is difficult to get here in the U.S.

AAR/SBL day 1

No pictures today, although I did take some, just a few thoughts on the first day. It seemed a bit slower than usual for a first day. The hall has quite a few empty booths, and the aisles are shorter than last year. Overall, the number of attendees seems down, too. I asked a few other vendors, and they agreed that it seemed a bit slower.

I stayed in the booth most of the day today, so I had the chance to meet quite a few other bibliobloggers. It is always nice to put a face to a name. Tomorrow at noon is the bibliobloggers' luncheon, and my 12:00 appointment had to cancel, so it looks like I might be able to participate, unless my 11:00 runs long...

One of the things about AAR/SBL is the receptions that fill the evenings, and tonight was no exception. I wanted to get to 3 of them, but only managed two in the end. The first one was well worth the trip. Abingdon and Liturgical Press joined forces to offer a night at the museum for the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. But, this wasn't just the Dead Sea Scrolls, this was food, drink, but best of all, the Dead Sea Scrolls with a tour guided by either Peter Flint or James Charlesworth. We got the Charlesworth tour, and it was well worth the time. He would walk up to a scroll and start reading it and tell a story about piecing it together, or something else like that. I was wonderful. Thanks, Abingdon and Liturgical!

We got back from the reception at around 10:00, so that put an end to the chance of attending the Baker reception. Instead, I wandered over to the de Gruyter reception, where I ended up talking to fellow blogger James Getz until about midnight. We discussed theology, Ugaritic, scapegoat rituals, what have you.

Tomorrow will be filled with appointments, and then a night with some friends from University of Chicago days whom I haven't seen in over 10 years, although we talk regularly via e-mail and phone.

UBS Readers Edition

I was able to get over to the American Bible Society's booth this afternoon. They have a new edition of the Vulgata, the fifth edition. And, fresh off the press, the UBS Reader's Edition of the Greek New Testament. It has a nice font, with the footnoted vocabulary definitions being content sensitive and double columned, which makes for a nice looking page. Here's a screenshot, taken with my camera.

AAR/SBL, day minus one

Today was set up for those of us who are vendors. For us, set up went very well and we were done in record time. I think part of it was that we sorted the skids by vendors, making it easier to put the books into the right booths. I think that must have saved us an hour.

Anyway, here are a few pictures:


All 4 skids, pretty as you could please, waiting for us at 8:00 AM this morning


What a mess! This is about 2/3 set up


The carpeting being rolled down the aisles.


The finished product. Note the tote bag on display; free with a $75.00 purchase this year. Otherwise it is $7.50.

San Diego

Well, we're here. It was a rough flight and a half-hour late, but no worries. I just slept and read the whole time. We have wireless in the room—free! I had about 100 e-mails to wade through, and I forgot to set up the weekly sale before I left yesterday, but other than that...hopefully my instructions on how to do the sale will be understood and BookNews will be on its way tomorrow AM. We'll see.

No, I don't participate in the "picture of my room" tradition :)

Off to dinner; it's only 6:15 here, but my stomach says it is 9:15.

AAR/SBL

Whew! Today is the last day before I leave for AAR/SBL in San Diego. Talk about a whirlwind of things to do. It seems like there are always things that surface at the last minute; you can everything all laid out perfectly, and Blam! something comes out of nowhere. Anyway, just one more purchase order to receive and I'm off to pack. Oh, wait, I have to place a purchase order with Brill and Continuum yet, and there is that... Yep, just another day at the office :)

Of course, I still have to get a few things done at home before I leave tomorrow morning at 9:00 AM. One of those is finding the boxes with all the clothes I need for AAR/SBL :) Note to self: Don't move 1 week before a major conference!

I don't know how Internet connectivity will be at the conference, but I will try to post pictures from the setup and the conference, as I have in years past.

"In everything give thanks!"

The dollar and books

<idle musing>
I'm sitting here listening to Mozart and setting up new books, when I run across this little curve ball:
You know the dollar is in the tank when publishers no longer print the price on their website! I was setting up a new Blackwell book today and went to their website for all the details, only find that the price is not displayed. They refer me to Wiley's website. Yikes! Does that mean the price will change between now and when it publishes later this month?
</idle musing>

Moving

OK, that was a weekend. We moved this weekend; it was only a 4 mile move, but those tend to be the worst ones, since you don't prepare for them adequately. We also managed to lock ourselves out of the house on Sunday afternoon :(

Yep, not even in the house 48 hours and locked out. It is has one of those doors that stays locked even when you open it; we haven't had one of those for years and forgot. Debbie walked out to sweep the porch, and I walked out about 2 minutes later to change the door knob on the garage. I pulled the door shut and didn't think anything. A few minutes later, Debbie asked if I had a key. Uh oh! Nope, we both walked out without a key. Now what?

Well, I had repaired a basement window temporarily with duct tape, so it wasn't really in there very well. So, I pushed the plexiglass pane in—only to find out that the window had steel bars preventing easy entry. Yikes, now what? Hmmm. The bottom side of the frame, also steel, appeared to be rusted, if I could just break enough of it away to slide the window off its frame and release it...15 minutes later, it gave way and I was able to slide through into the basement and open the door.

First order of business: extra keys!

Verse for the day: In everything give thanks...

Now, to unpack enough to pack back up for AAR/SBL. We leave on Thursday morning.

Kitten

We are about ready to move into the house we bought. We have been working on it every night for the last 2 weeks, and it is about done. But, Wednesday night we heard a strange sound, the meowing of a kitten underneath the shed next to the garage. Someone must have abandoned it on the roadside and it took up residence under the shed. It was meowing pitifully, but it would not let us get close to it.

It would hear us when we came outside, and would venture out from under the shed and start meowing, but if we started walking towards it, it would retreat back under the shed. I tried about 5-6 times to pick it up, but it always disappeared under the shed before I could retrieve it. Debbie was more patient than I, and last night she managed to get a hold of it. The poor thing is all skin, bones and fur; it must barely have been weened. And it stunk; it had poop all over the back half of it. Ever the merciful one, Debbie brought it into the kitchen (there's no furniture yet), put some dry cat food in a bowl and added water to soften it. The kitten started eating, but kept on meowing while it ate. It polished off the food in no time, still meowing endlessly. Debbie picked it up and cleaned it up some, although it still stunk, and started petting it. It started to purr. She put it down on the floor and it started to cry again.

Since she had work to do, she let it follow her around. While she was painting, it would get as close as it could and fall asleep for a little while, then wake up and cry some more until it realize she was still there, within reach.

While I don't spiritualize everything, this seemed like an obvious parable to me, especially the way the kitten ran away from us at first and was covered with poop. We are drawn to God, but we run away from Him. We know that it is better with Him, but we are afraid to leave the shelter of our poop infested hole in the ground. But, the Holy Spirit, Debbie in this case (it certainly wasn't I!), keeps on pursuing us; He catches us, feeds us, and cleans us up. He stays close to us, even when we wake up and don't see Him at first.

Oh, we put the kitten in the barn last night when we left, along with more food and water. There is straw there and a small cat door. I'm not as hopeful as Debbie that it will survive, but we'll see.

AAR/SBL split

This is the last year that AAR and SBL will have a joint meeting until 2011. I noticed that both AAR and SBL have been courting their members already for the 2008 meetings. This week I received mailings from both SBL and AAR, trying to convince me that as a vendor, I need to display at their convention by touting figures about number of attendees and percentage who attend the book exhibit, etc.

Well, Eisenbrauns will probably display at both of them, at least the first year. But, the pricing is highway robbery. Displaying at the joint meetings is expensive, but you have the potential to reach 7,00-10,000 people. The figures for the individual meetings are significantly less, so you would think that AAR and SBL would factor that into the pricing. Did they? Nope! Not only are prices the same, but in the case of AAR, they have actually reduced the booth size and shortened the show by a day! But, that's not all. They split the exhibit area into two sections (bad enough) and, to add insult to injury, they priced most of the exhibit hall one booths at premium prices (an extra $550 per booth)!

Let's see if I get this straight. You are decreasing the attendance by almost 1/2, cutting my display space by 20%, decreasing the length of the conference by 25%, relegating me to the Exhibit Hall 2 and wanting me to think you are doing me a favor?

Hmmm...let me think about that for a while. Oh, I almost forgot, if I reserve the booth space during this year's AAR/SBL, I get $50.00 off! Of course, I have to include 50% of the cost with the application! So, they get to use the exhibitors' funds for 11 months. Yep, I'm definitely in the wrong business...

Beautiful sunset

Andy has posted a nice set of pictures from sunset over Winona Lake. Truly beautiful. I walk along the lake every day on my way to and from work. The lake truly is beautiful, as long as you don't get close enough to smell it :(

This is my favorite from his collection, although the seven blended into one is very nice, too.

New book

Just got the information on this one yesterday and was waiting on the cover graphic to post it. It has been a long time in the making, but it looks very good. We will have page proofs at AAR/SBL, so if you are into Akkadian, especially Neo-Assyrian, this is a must-have! The price is waiting on how much printing and binding costs.

Assyrian-English-Assyrian Dictionary

Edited by Simo Parpola and Robert M. Whiting
Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project - NATCP, Forthcoming January 2008
xxii + 289 pages, English and Akkadian
Paper
ISBN: 9789521013324
Your Price: Not yet set
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~PARASSYRI

Faith seeking understanding

A very interesting—and true—post on Jesus Creed today on faith and learning. Here is a brief snippet:

Far too many PhD students, and they really do begin the issues during their master’s degrees, learn to “bracket off” their faith in some sort of “objectivity” so they can learn to study the Bible without bias or faith commitment. If you learn to think about the Bible apart from your faith you will soon learn how to live without your faith. This is dangerous. We must not ever let our faith be bracketed off. We are first Christians.

Read the whole thing; as a professor of mine used to say, "You owe it to yourself."

<idle musing>
I saw too many students fall prey to this while I was in graduate school; I did it to an extent myself. As Scot says, we can't bracket off our faith, it needs to inform all we do. If it doesn't, we are essentially nothing more than practicing atheists at best and hypocrites besides.
</idle musing>

I'm a sucker for these things...

OK, I admit it, I'm a sucker for these things, especially when it makes me look better than I am...

Cash Advance Loans

So there! :)

Now, back to submitting to the Lord and allowing Him to kill my pride, because I certainly can't!

The shipment has left the building

Whew! The AAR/SBL and the ASOR shipment just left the building. One pallet went to ASOR and 5 pallets left for AAR/SBL. That, my friends, is a lot of books. Thousands of pounds worth of books. And I really, really don't want to bring them back from San Diego with me! So, that means you have to buy them!

Of course, that also means that on November 16, I will have 5 skids of stuff waiting to be set up. 8 booths, 5 skids, 8 hours to set it up so that you can buy it all in 3 1/2 days.

Of floors and houses

OK; I admit it doesn't have the ring to it that Of mice and men does, but it does sum up my weekend. We got our house a week ago Friday, and have been working on it since then, which explains why my posting has been somewhat spotty.

We tore up the carpeting on the first floor, because we knew that underneath it was a hardwood oak floor. We figured it could be refinished more easily before we moved in. Besides, we prefer hardwood floors. So, last weekend (not the one that just ended), after spending the better part of two days pulling up the carpet, we had the floor guy come out. Sure enough, he said the floor was in wonderful shape—except for the big dog pee stains in the middle of the floor! Verdict? Not a chance that those would come out!

Now what? Quick check on the budget—both time and money :) OK, let's do it! So, Monday last we ran out and bought the stuff to put down a floating hardwood floor. Yes, the real stuff, not Pergo. By the grace of God, our son, whose job takes him all over the US, was in the area and had Friday-Sunday off. He showed up Thursday night, we did some preliminary prep work and then Friday night through last night we attacked the floor, one living room, two bedrooms and a hallway. This morning at about 2 AM, we finished it, including the trim.

I must say, it looks good, very good. If I had remembered to take the camera, I would post pictures :(

I had forgotten how frustrating, time consuming, and rewarding owning a house could be. Uh oh, look at the time. Off to work!

November sale at Eisenbrauns

November is here, and we have posted a new sale at Eisenbrauns. This month we are featuring books by bibliobloggers. If I missed you, I'm sorry :(

List of bibliobloggers

John Hobbins has put together a list of bibliobloggers which is the most complete I have seen so far. Of course, he is missing some, but if everyone swamps his comment section, I'm sure he will update it :)

Forklift damage

We get shipments of new books on pallets. Usually there is no damage and everything is good, but once in a while someone in a warehouse somewhere gets a bit careless and hits it with a forklift. Here is what a book looks like after a forklift hits it:



Not very saleable, even as used :( We pull the boards of them and recycle the pages. I suppose you could build a library eventually if you did a lot of dumpster diving!

Just in time for AAR/SBL

We managed to get them in time to take to AAR/SBL. Now you have a choice of a free mug or a free tote with a $75.00 purchase at AAR/SBL. Otherwise, only $7.50, just like the mug.

Enuma Elish Tote Bag


Eisenbrauns, Forthcoming, November 2007
600-denier polycanvas, Akkadian
Cloth, 15 x 14.75 x 1
Your Price: $7.50
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~EISTOTE

These are very sturdy and nice totes, perfect for all those books you can't live without :)

New books

This is a great time of year to be a bookseller—and a terrible time of year to be a bookseller, it is so busy with new books and conferences. Today the last of the European shipments came for AAR/SBL. Full of goodies :) Yesterday afternoon the Carta shipment arrived, with the Sacred Abridgment, as we are calling it. And, for the archaeologists out there, the latest Masada volume also arrived. Here are the details:

Carta's New Century Handbook and Atlas of the Bible
Abridgement of The Sacred Bridge
by Anson F. Rainey and R. Steven Notley
Carta, Jerusalem, 2007
280 pages + full color illustrations and maps, English
Cloth, 9 x 12 inches
ISBN: 9652207038
Your Price: $50.00
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~RAICARTAS

Masada VIII
The Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963-1965
Masada 7
Edited by Joseph Aviram, et al.
Israel Exploration Society, 2007
ix + 232 pages, 8 color plates, numerous photos and drawings, English
Cloth with dustjacket, 31 x 23.5 cm
ISBN: 9789652210678
Your Price: $74.00
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~MASADA8

Oh, I almost forgot, the latest Yardeni wall chart arrived, too:

Hebrew Scripts
A Carta Wall Chart
by Ada Yardeni
Carta, Jerusalem, 2007
Folds out to 70×100 cm (27½×39 in.); laminated; case: 27×35.5 cm (10½×14 in.), Hebrew
Laminated
ISBN: 9652207047
Your Price: $19.95
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~YARHEBREW

We will have all of these at AAR/SBL, plus a bunch more!

Miracles

<idle musing>
I have been reading in the gospel according to Matthew lately. One thing that really hit me this morning was the thirsting after a miracle, not as a blessing, but as a seal of approval. Consider this in chapters 14 & 15, Jesus feeds 5000 people, throws a demon out of a Canaanite woman’s daughter, and feeds the 4000—I suppose I should also include walking on water, but that was more between him and his disciples.

After all this, what does chapter 16 start with? A round of applause? Hardly. The Pharisees and Sadducees hit him up for a miracle! A sign! Before you turn your nose up and sniff at the hardness of “those people,” consider yourself. How often has God done a wondrous thing in your life, only to have you thank him by doing your own thing; turn your back on Him and walk away? OK, maybe I’m the only one, but I doubt it.

Aside from the abiding presence of God via the Holy Spirit, that is exactly what all of us do—continually! The older I become, the more convinced I am of the truth of total depravity—and free grace! Grace abounding, freely flowing, surrounding and lifting us, if we will but allow it, delivering us from the necessity of a continual reminder via a miracle or sign. Renewing us daily in the image of God, sending us forth as a light in a darkened place.

All I can say is, “Wow! What a savior!”
</idle musing>

Instant dissertations

In case you hadn't noticed, Gorgias Press has a blog. One of their editors, Steve Wiggens, is the main contributor. I only visit it occasionally because their RSS feed doesn't work correctly. Well, the other day I looked at it, and they had come up with a novel idea: a pill that would produce dissertations, term papers, whatever, in 1/2 hour or less!



Imagine that. I wonder if they would sell it to Eisenbrauns at wholesale?

New book

This was just announced by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht:

Mysteries in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
A Copenhagen Bonhoeffer Symposium
Forschungen zur systematischen und ökumenischen Theologie - FSOT 119
Edited by Kirsten Busch Nielsen, Ulrik Nissen, and Christiane Tietz
Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2007
366 pages, German
Paper
ISBN: 9783525563472
Your Price: $75.00
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~NIEMYSTER

We will be getting them in time to take to AAR/SBL; I can't wait to get a look at it.

a lot of not-so hot air

As I was walking to work yesterday and descending the stairs to the park, I heard a very loud hissing noise and saw all kinds of mist. Now, normally the irrigation makes quite a bit of noise and there is a visible spray, but this was different. It made me think of descending into the lair of Smaug, the dragon in The Hobbit. I thought perhaps they had turned all the irrigation on at one time and turned up the water pressure. Since it was raining anyway, I figured I would walk down the sidewalk and defend myself with the umbrella I had in my hand—the irrigation normally does a very good job or irrigating the sidewalk anyway.

Well, as I approached the first spigot, I noticed that it was just spouting out mist, not a stream of water. The second, third, fourth, actually all of them, were doing the same thing, spraying not water but mist. The horrendously loud hissing was because there wasn’t enough water in the pipes to silence the noise. I thought maybe the pump was broken and pumping air instead of water. But, as I neared the lake, I saw that it was intentional; they were bleeding the lines in preparation for winter.

I had heard all this noise, seen all this spray in the air and assumed that I was going to get drenched by water, but in actuality, there was nothing of substance behind the noise and mist. Sound familiar? I could go two directions with this, but the thing that struck me was the fear and trepidation I felt, versus the relief when I found out it was all a mist. Sort of like the lies that enemy throws at us on a daily basis about life in the Spirit. Sounds scary—what happens if I just trust God and don’t attempt to control everything? It is sure to go to pieces without my valuable input! But, it is just noise and a mist; God is more than capable of sustaining His people in life, directing their steps, keeping them safe from sin.

Belonging?

Jon at The Theos Project has a nice l-o-n-g post about belonging and church.

Each church has an all-you-can-eat buffet of ministries and programs to get involved with, often listed in helpful summary format within your weekly bulletin.

How about that, right on the heals of the Willow Creek study that found out that programs are basically worthless...but he continues:

American Christianity has no belonging. Consequently the body has weakened and atrophied. We are attempting our tasks and striving to fulfill our function in an anemic state. How unfortunate. The body of Christ was meant to represent Christ. Yet, for all practical purposes Christ's body is still wheezing in the grave, too weak to emerge and make a difference in the world.

The most fundamental aspect of the body of Christ is true belonging. It is only when we truly belong that we can begin to make a real difference in the lives of the 21st century believer and demonstrate to the world that the body of Christ is, in fact, alive and no longer lying, weakened and cold, in the grave. But this cannot occur until each member belongs to all the others.

<idle musing>
Amen, brother! Preach it!

Oh, wait...in order to belong, we need to be willing to give up our independence, become vulnerable, trust the Holy Spirit, actually care about other people and not just ourselves. Nope! Cost is too high; back to the programs! At least we can control the intended outcomes—and bury those studies that show us we are wrong! Rewrite the scriptures to make God over in our image, since it is obvious that our models are more correct than God's! I mean, we know that business models are better than scriptural ones, right?

But, isn't that how we act? God, forgive us!
</idle musing>

Power!

Although the world has made giant strides in comprehending subjects like atomic energy and nuclear fusion, most of us still live with only the slightest understanding of the most ancient, dynamic source of power there is—the power that comes from prayer. In fact, we have not yet begun to experience the infinite power and possibility that decomes available when we call on the name of the Lord in prayer.—Jim Cymbala

Statute of limitations?

On one of the many e-lists I subscribe to, I recently found out about a fun little web comic concerning a library and its employees. One of them was an interesting take on forgiveness:



Then, yesterday, I read the following on Jesus Community, talking about loving one another:

This means forgiveness, ongoing forgiveness. Even covering over a multitude of sins, which love—as we love each other deeply—does. It sometimes means putting up with each other; there are certainly unlikeable characteristics or habits of us all. It certainly means holding nothing against a sister or brother. And if there is a problem, praying about it and going to the person to gently resolve it.

<idle musing>
Significant difference in viewpoint, isn’t it? If only the church would always live as the body of Christ, forgiving one another and bearing with one another in love. Of course, we can’t do that on our own power; it has to be the power of the Holy Spirit living and ruling in us. In our flesh, we want the statute of limitations to run out about 30 seconds after someone offends us, but Christ calls us to live in forgiveness—always! A high and holy calling, possible only because of grace operating every moment of every day in our lives.
</idle musing>

What was that?

OK, I realize that Eisenbrauns sells titles that are a bit out of the ordinary; that is a given. After all, we are a niche publisher/bookseller in a highly specialized field. But, this one has me wondering. First, here is the correct information:

Mystical and Mythological Explanatory Works of Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars
by Alasdair Livingstone
Eisenbrauns, 2007
ix + 270 pages + 7 plates, English
Cloth, 6 x 9 inches
ISBN: 1575061333
List Price: $39.50
Your Price: $35.55
www.eisenbrauns.com/wconnect/wc.dll?ebGate~EIS~~I~LIVMYSTIC

So, what does Amazon do with it:

Mystucal and Mytgological Explantory Works of Assyian and Babylonian Scholars (Hardcover)
by Alsadair Livingstone (Author)

Hmmm, 4 misspellings in one title! I will see if I can get it fixed :)

Spiritual?

"Our embarrassment in reading the harsh expressions of divine wrath is also due to the general disposition of modern man. We have no sense for spiritual grandeur. Spiritual to us means ethereal, calm, moderate, slight, imperceptible. We respond to beauty; grandeur is unbearable. We are moved by a soft religiosity, and would like to think that God is lovely, tender, and familiar, as if faith were a source of comfort, but not readiness for martyrdom.

To our mind the terrible threat of castigation bespeaks a lack of moderation. Is it not because we are only dimly aware of the full gravity of human failure, of the sufferings inflicted by those who revile God's demand for justice? There is a cruelty that pardons, just as there is a pity which punishes. Severity must tame whom love cannot win." Heschel in The Prophets, 2.76

Healthy snack?

I walked into the break room at work today to this:



Hmmm. Top Health news right next to cookies, donuts, and candy. Well, I read the health news while I was munching on a donut :)

Adam and Steve-not Eve

Jon, one of our copy editors, has a thought-provoking post on how poorly prepared to do actual ministry most churches are. Another blogger, Sam, presented the scenario of a married couple, with adopted kid, named Jack and John—that's correct, a gay married couple—where one of the men wants to become a Christian.

How would the average church handle it? Jon doesn't think the average church is equipped to:

My primary thought is that the American church has very little organizational capacity for correctly and compassionately engaging John and his family. For example, the current church model is that believers meet on Sunday morning and may or may not have other "ministries" or "programs" that they are a part of. So, basically, if you believe that homosexuality is wrong or perhaps not the best way to do things, then you have to ship the guy (in this scenario, John) off to "counseling" (or some other such ministry/program) or else you just kind of lay down the law (in a nice way) and say that we don't do things that way in these here parts so you can shape up or ship out.

So, we either have to issue an ultimatum or else send John to counseling. In the former situation I think we force a hasty decision on a new believer that he may not be entirely ready to deal with, in all of its many ramifications (i.e. the moral issue, issues of family/love, caring for a daughter, splitting a home, etc.). In the case of sending him to counseling right away this makes him feel freakish from the very beginning, and this is very unfair. The fact is that anyone who comes to Christ is going to have baggage, and they need a close-knit community and a group of individuals to share their faith with and to work through baggage that they bring in and baggage that they accumulate while being a believer. (The little-known secret, of course, is that most of us in nice churches have even more baggage that usually gets lost in the shuffle, and my experience is that you accumulate quite a bit of baggage in church circles because we often do not have the contexts for dealing real issues.)

The point thus far is simply to say that the current Sunday morning Christianity in America has no human or even biblical way to appropriately deal with Sam's scenario because we are an event-oriented institution. At our most fundamental level we are not relational. At our most fundamental level we are institutional and obsessed with "events."

Jon goes on to suggest his solution:

Ideally, all believers are not simply a hodge-podge group of people that meet once a week to sing and watch a sermon. Rather, the best scenario that I can see would be that when John enters into a fellowship of believers he is immediately plugged in with a group of believers with whom he can meet regularly and begin to share his life. In fact, in my mind's eye I imagine that it was probably through contact with this group of believers that he was able to come to faith, rather than on Sam's scenario where the guy happens across a Bible and starts reading.

Within this very small group of caring believers John can begin to explore who he is with people who are ready to care for his soul and impart grace into his life. These would be people who would be primarily interested in getting to know John, the person, and finding out what faith looks like for his situation. They would be interested in John, regardless of where they stood on the homo issue. If they believed that God stands against homosexuality, they would present their reasons and interact with various biblical passages. But then they would allow John the respect as a fellow believer to work through these issues himself. (This fulfills the Galatians 6 "bear each other's burdens" exhortation, as well as the Philippians 2 encouragement to "work out your salvation.") Furthermore, this caring yet insightful group of believers would suspend judgment and allow themselves to reexplore and reexamine an issue that needs to be reexamined.

Jon then concludes:

Unfortunately, Sam's scenario cannot be answered in the existing church framework. One is hard pressed to find an American church that truly acts in unison as the body of Christ. We have many "churches" but no body. And the sad thing is that there is no reason for someone like John to ever have any interest in Jesus Christ, because the Body of Christ is completely impotent. We have nothing to call John to - no true community or real fellowship. So, as unfortunate as it is, I believe that Sam's scenario remains an impossible quandary. Until the power of Christ is displayed in authentic relationships and true community we should expect very little.

What do you think? Do you know of a church that is equipped to handle this scenario?

I think even most house churches wouldn't know how to handle it. And, I agree with Jon that "Until the power of Christ is displayed in authentic relationships and true community" we can expect no revival, no true transformation, no respect, and no power. In short, we need to die to self, that Christ might truly live.

Amusing ourselves

Christianity Today has posted an editorial from the October issue about the use of video in the church. They specifically mention a baptism video that they ran across on the web.

Which brings us back to that baptism video. It illustrates Postman's thesis that television has become the metaphor for all discourse, and, as Stefan Schoerghofer writes, that "off the screen, the same metaphor prevails. People no longer talk to each other they entertain each other."

As this metaphor has entered Christian worship, we use video clips to make the message more compelling. We can be seated just a few rows from the pulpit and be more likely to think about the quality of video than the preacher's words.

The baptism video, though it was posted on the internet, was clearly designed to be shown in a worship service. ("If you haven't signed up yet," says the pastor, "I'm sure that after this video you'll be really excited about it and want to sign up. So don't everybody rush to the information center at once after the service. Be careful. Please form a line.") The pastor cannot help using the ironic vocabulary of cheap comedy. And the video is subject to the temptations inherent in the medium: words that have to be bleeped out, pushing a baptismal candidate off the edge of the pool, showing a (thankfully) blurred image of what is supposed to be a naked candidate, and getting drenched when a candidate cannonballs into the pool. This is the vocabulary of Comedy Central, not the discourse of discipleship.

Is this the kind of offering that we make to a holy God?...No wonder the church is seen as an irrelevant country club by so many.

They conclude:

Postman pointed out two dangers that can destroy a culture. One is the Orwellian, in which culture becomes a prison. The other is the Huxleyan, in which culture becomes a comedy. You can see the Orwellian danger coming far in advance. It publishes books like Mein Kampf and goose-steps its way into our lives. But the Huxleyan danger sneaks up on us. As Postman wrote, "When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a comedy show, then a nation finds itself at risk."

Consumerism or contribution?

I am not a big fan—actually, I'm not a fan at all!—of Rick Warren, but this quote from Out of Ur is too good not to post:

The American church as a whole needs to move from selfish consumerism to unselfish contribution. Those are poles apart. To start with a woman who's most interested in how many diamonds she's got in her tennis bracelet, and move her to sit under a banyan tree holding an AIDS baby- that's a giant leap. People in this culture are trained to think about me, me, me; I've got to do what's best for me. Even when we go to church we have this consumer mentality.

<idle musing>
That pretty much says it all, doesn't it? Only the grace of the living God can get people out of their curvatus in se mode. Only as they realize, and I mean beyond an intellectual assent, that they are not the center of the universe can they allow God to change them from the inside out.
</idle musing>

The fear of the LORD

<idle musing>
I was running through the occurrences of “worship” in the NIV the other day, comparing them to the Greek and Hebrew. I noticed that they consistently translate “fear of the Lord” or “God fearers” as worship or worshipers. I compared that with the RSV and NRSV and found that the RSV translates the phrases literally, but the NRSV follows the NIV.

That is all interesting, but what really struck me is in 2 Kings, about the people brought into the northern kingdom after it fell. In 2 Kings 17, the RSV says “So they feared the LORD but also served their own gods” and the Hebrew is—drat, I can't get the Hebrew to display correctly—but the important thing is the Hebrew verbs, in parentheses, "they were fearing (YR') YHWH, but they were serving (`BD) their gods."

That is a scary thought to me. Is it possible to fear the LORD, but still serve other gods? Apparently it is, at least to the writer of Kings. What would that look like? Here is my reconstruction, and you tell me what you think:

On Sabbath and other important holy days, such as new moon, Passover, etc., the people make a point of appearing at the cult center and making the necessary sacrifice. After fulfilling their obligations, they return home and pour out a libation to the idol that is sitting just inside the door. As they make their meal, they are very careful to make sure the idols get their share. They might even gather around it for the meal. Remember, they probably have only one or two rooms in the house, so the idol sees everything. At night, at least if we can go by the Akkadian and Egyptian rituals, they are careful to put it to bed. In the morning, the first thing they do is take care of it, giving it food and drink, etc.

So, it is the first thing they think about in the morning, and the last thing they think about at night; throughout the day they are conscious of it and make sure to give it food and drink and care for it. They make sure that it is plugged in, and that the sound is loud enough to be heard in every room. It is turned on first thing in the morning, and is on all day. It has the place of honor in the living room, is in a prominent spot in every bedroom. All meals are eaten around it, and conversation is only about things that appear on it. When they go to work, the conversation is about the actions of the people who appeared on its screen the night before, or that morning. Nothing else is nearly as important, and huge sums of money are spent to insure that it is large enough, and that the satellite or cable connection is good enough. Of course, come Sunday, they need to attend church—after all, they are christians! But, as soon as the “service” is done, they rush home to turn the idol back on, especially if a sporting event is going to happen—what, you say that isn’t fair?
</idle musing>

We interrupt this regularly scheduled...

Wow!
We just bought a house!
Yep. we've been married over 29 years, rented for 23 of them, including the last 12, but yesterday we signed the papers and now own a house. The jokes at work included such things as, "I'm going to keep watching for signs of an alien takeover!" to looking out the front door and asking if anyone saw the four horses of the apocalypse standing there. :)

Anyway, it is a little brick house set on 1.99 acres and bordered on the south by Cherry Creek. Here's a picture of it:



We move in during November. That's right, the busiest time of the year, with AAR/SBL. I guess that will make it more fun, right? Anyway, we're excited—anybody got a goat to eat the grass for me?

Bees

<idle musing>
We just took in our hummingbird feeder for the year. The hummers have been gone for about 2 weeks now, and all we were doing was feeding the bees. But, before we put it away, I noticed something interesting. There were always about 3-5 bees around the feeder, sometimes more, and watching their behavior was enlightening. Sometimes two bees would lock onto each other and fall the 3 feet to the porch, with an audible bump. They would be locked together, obviously fighting, for 2-3 seconds before one would pull free and fly back to the feeder. The other one would follow, and they would repeat the process. This happened at least 5-6 times before one of them would give up and fly away.

Then, about a minute later, the whole thing would be repeated by a different set of bees. This went on throughout the whole afternoon. I asked Debbie if she had noticed it, and she said that she had actually found a dead bee under the feeder. So, this wasn’t just good natured jousting for the best position; this was a life and death matter.

I don’t know a lot about bees, but my theory is that they were from different hives and each wanted to keep the source of sugar to themselves. Now, there was about 1/2 cup of sugar water in the feeder, which is probably enough to keep all the hives in a mile radius more that happy. Besides, if it disappeared, we could make more! But, in their narrow understanding, the bees were “protecting their rights” and “making sure they had enough” for their family. Sound familiar? It should, since that is the normal justification we humans use for our selfishness.

Who said the fall didn’t affect nature?
</idle musing>

Evangelism, part 2

Part 2 of David Fitch’s critique of evangelism, american style has been posted. Here’s a snippet:

Our churches are organized to meet the spiritual needs of individuals, and our salvation is incredibly individualistic. Calling Jesus “a personal Savior” sounds like Jesus is in the same category as my personal barber, personal trainer, or personal dental hygenist (BTW, I don't have a personal trainer). The danger is making salvation all about me.

I know it didn't start out this way in evangelicalism, but it was latent in the structure of our soteriology. And so we have almost romanticized our relationship with God; created a narcissistic experience of it. And churches become all about preserving, maintaining, and nurturing this experience in their parishioners.

But the gospel is not about getting something, it is about participating in something—God's work of reconciling the whole world to Himself. And yes, we do have a relationship with God which becomes personal but it is inseparable from His mission.

<idle musing>
I have seen a good deal of the romantic view of our relationship with God; it tends to make one chase more “experiences” and spiritual highs. If the “manifest presence of God” isn’t felt, then something must be wrong. A good healthy dose of some of the mystics would be a good cure for that. How about a chapter or two from St. John of the Cross on the “dark night of the soul?” I think he goes too far, but it sure is a healthy corrective to the false highs of “worship” that are common in some circles.

By the way, what is “worship?” Is it just singing? Or, is it much more than that? Pull out your handy-dandy concordance and do a quick scan of worship. . .
</idle musing>

Reputation

The latest Barna Group study is out:

The study shows that 16- to 29-year-olds exhibit a greater degree of criticism toward Christianity than did previous generations when they were at the same stage of life. In fact, in just a decade, many of the Barna measures of the Christian image have shifted substantially downward, fueled in part by a growing sense of disengagement and disillusionment among young people. For instance, a decade ago the vast majority of Americans outside the Christian faith, including young people, felt favorably toward Christianity’s role in society. Currently, however, just 16% of non-Christians in their late teens and twenties said they have a "good impression" of Christianity.

One of the groups hit hardest by the criticism is evangelicals. Such believers have always been viewed with skepticism in the broader culture. However, those negative views are crystallizing and intensifying among young non-Christians. The new study shows that only 3% of 16 - to 29-year-old non-Christians express favorable views of evangelicals. This means that today’s young non-Christians are eight times less likely to experience positive associations toward evangelicals than were non-Christians of the Boomer generation (25%). . .

When young people were asked to identify their impressions of Christianity, one of the common themes was "Christianity is changed from what it used to be" and "Christianity in today’s society no longer looks like Jesus." These comments were the most frequent unprompted images that young people called to mind, mentioned by one-quarter of both young non-Christians (23%) and born again Christians (22%).

Kinnaman explained, "That’s where the term 'unChristian' came from. Young people are very candid. In our interviews, we kept encountering young people - both those inside the church and outside of it - who said that something was broken in the present-day expression of Christianity. Their perceptions about Christianity were not always accurate, but what surprised me was not only the severity of their frustration with Christians, but also how frequently young born again Christians expressed some of the very same comments as young non-Christians."

<idle musing>
What else should we expect when we claim to have the answer and then proceed to live as if we don’t? The unchristian acts by christians should bring a rebuke. Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." (John 13:34-35, RSV), but we have put the emphasis on other things. We deserve the negative perceptions unless our lives radiate the love of Jesus—and that can only happen by total reliance on the empowering presence of God in the form of the Holy Spirit, in other words, grace. We can’t conjure it up, work it up, or in any way make it happen; it has to be God.
</idle musing>

A tale of two offices

John, who abandoned us this fall to teach at Asbury Seminary, sent us this picture of his office today



I decided I would send him a picture of me in my second office.



Granted, he has the fancier shelves, but I think I have more books, by a few aisles worth. And don't fail to note the cuneiform t-shirt and, of course, I have the bigger tea cup :)

Philology

“Philology is that venerable art which demands of its votaries one thing above all: to go aside, to take time, to become still, to become slow — it is a goldsmith’s art and connoisseurship of the word which has nothing but delicate cautious work to do and achieves nothing if it does not achieve it lento. But for precisely this reason it is more necessary than ever today; by precisely this means does it entice and enchant us the most, in the midst of an age of “work” that is to say, of hurry, of indecent and perspiring haste, which wants to “get everything done” at once, including every old or new book: — this art does not easily get anything done, it teaches to read well, that is to say, to read slowly, deeply, looking cautiously before and aft, with reservations, with doors left open, with delicate fingers and eyes.” — Nietzsche, Daybreak 1881

An immigrant's story

<idle musing>
The subject of immigration is a political hot potato right now. You have opinions ranging from, “Throw them all out!” to “Open our arms to everyone.” Everyone seems to have an opinion, always right, of course, since it is theirs! The one thing I don’t hear, and really wish I did, is a Christian take on it. Sure, I have heard christians expounding on it, but I haven’t heard a Christian message in their exposition. It seems to be more of a protection of the status quo, or a political statement. Where is the heart of Christ in all this?

Well, over the weekend I ran across a post on Out of Ur that addresses the issue from what I think is the heart of God. It is written by a second generation immigrant with a Harvard degree, Isaac Canales (which, as an aside, makes me ask, how many generations removed are most of us from being immigrants? My grandfather’s parents had him only 3 years after immigrating). Here is a snippet, but please read the whole thing
</idle musing>

Throughout our history there have been times when non-Christians see through our hypocrisy. They recognize that not everyone is truly welcome in our churches. These are times when we’ve worried about being politically right when we should be focused on being biblically correct.

The root of American evangelical hypocrisy is smugness; a historical inability to understand God’s unfailing mercies for the immigrant, his unfailing love for the poor among us. If our sense of worth is measured by privatized religion and political culture—from our color, to our work ethic, to the neighborhoods we live and worship in—we remain independent of God and self-sufficiently smug. Christ cannot help us. We are not being his church.

Ouch! Blunt, to the point, and correct. We need to repent of our self-righteous smugness and become the church of God.

Abide

There has been a nice series about grace and what it means on Grace Roots. Here is a short snippet from Friday’s

A branch on the vine doesn't simply figure out what kind of plant it is and then look at the vine for instructions on how to bear fruit and then simply go about producing fruit. The branch "rests" (remains, abides) in the vine and draws all life and sustenance from the vine, and eventually (not immediately nor forcibly nor due to compulsion) the branch bears the fruit that the vine itself produces. It's a natural process, and if the branch tries to "help" the vine (such as when Abraham and Sarah tried to help God fulfill His promise that they would bear a son), the fruit that is produced is not God's natural fruit, no matter how lovely it might appear.

The rich young ruler was perhaps thinking that his "fruit" (keeping the commandments) was more than adequate to justify himself in front of a holy God. Jesus, by pointing out just how far short this man fell, caused him sadness as he realized he wasn't nearly as close to the kingdom of heaven as he thought. He went away sad, because just a few moments before he had considered himself close to the kingdom, but he now realized he was a lifetime away, because he hadn't realized that in order to come to God, he must give his entire life away.

IF ONLY he'd received the revelation that the Apostle Paul would eventually receive. (And perhaps one day he did receive this revelation). You not only have to give your life away, you have to die. But this death, of course, is not a death in which you physically give your body or your possessions away. It's a spiritual death, in which you give up any and all notions that anything you do - any of your law keeping or giving away of your possessions - will bring you even one step closer to God. You must die and be born again.

<idle musing>
Yes! We can never do enough to earn it; we can never produce fruit; we can’t do anything except sin—apart from the empowering presence of almighty God in the form of the Holy Spirit (my favorite definition of grace)! But, when we rest in that power, we experience the love of God flowing through us and doing righteousness.
</idle musing>

Evangelism?

Out of Ur, the Christianity Today website has a very good post on evangelism as frequently practiced by evangelicals. You can read the whole thing here; it is actually part one, but the second part hasn’t appeared yet. Here is a short snippet:

I believe one weakness in evangelicalism the emerging church is responding to is evangelicalism's excessively rationalist approach to truth and salvation that birthed a stubborn "we're in/you're out" mentality. There has been an impulse in evangelical fundamentalism towards a.) an intolerant judgmental exclusivism, b.) an arrogant, even violent, certainty about what we do know, and c.) an overly-rationalized hyper-cognitive gospel that takes the mystery out of everything.

Many of us grew up with this. This was most obvious in the way we made hell the selling point of the gospel. We said if you do A and B you’ll be pardoned from sin and escape hell. Those who do not do A or B are going to hell. We built an apologetic that defended this to prove to people outside the church they were doomed. It came off arrogant, coercive, unloving, and indeed antithetical to the very nature of the gospel.

He continues, a little later:

If you ask me whether I believe there is a hell I will tell you yes. To me the reality of hell is evident in the evil and destruction of souls I see here on earth all the time. If you ask me whether I believe that the salvation God has worked through the person and work of Jesus Christ has direct consequences on our eternal destiny as persons, again I will tell you yes. But if you ask me whether this singularly defines what it means to be saved, here is where I would say no. For our eternal life is the end of a life lived in His salvation (Rom 6:22), not the goal in and of itself. And so let's not put the cart before the horse.

<idle musing>
Yes! Salvation is more than “getting to heaven;” actually, heaven has little to do with salvation. Salvation is salvation from sin—not just individual sins, but SIN. Systemic sins, personal sins, all have to go for the kingdom of God to become reality. The grace of God delivers us from personal sins, and by the grace of God we work to eliminate systemic sins. It is no accident that John Wesley started schools for the miners’ kids. It is no accident that Christians were on the front lines in the abolitionist movement. It is no accident that William and Catherine Booth worked in the inner city. But, somewhere along the line evangelicals lost that cutting edge and became comfortable with the status quo.

I suspect that one reason we don’t see real revival is because christians don’t want to repent and change. Revival always starts with the house of God; if we won’t repent and turn from our wicked ways, how can we expect the world to turn from its wicked ways? And, the truth be told, far too frequently the wicked ways of the christians are more wicked than the wicked ways of the world. That is a travesty!
</idle musing>

Why do we do that?

The work of Louis Althusser ["Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, 1971] on ideology offers another important way of examining how consent is created among subjects—indeed, how subjects are created in such a way that it is difficult for them to question self-evident notions and practices and hence makes it hard to resist them. One of Althusser’s most important insights is that ideology is not to be understood as a set of ideas alone but rather as practices. In other words, ideology has a material and an embodied existence in the practices through which people enact it, and thereby live it, on a daily basis. Ideology is inculcated into every state subject, according to Althusser, through what he calls Ideological State Apparatuses, or ISAs. These ISAs consist of multiple institutions or locations through which a dominant ideology is instilled into people from birth onward; examples include the family, religious institutions, and schools. ISAs are especially effective at creating unquestioning subjects, says Althusser, because the various institutions that make them up are both multiple and hence mutually reinforcing and because these institutions appear to be dedicated to very different ends, so that people are unaware that they are being molded according to a particular ideology. ISAs instill a dominant ideology not just by promulgating particular ideas about the world (ideological content) but also through particular formalized embodied actions: for example, the proper way to behave when in a public library; or, to cite Althusser’s famous example, when one performs a ritual action such as kneeling in a church, one becomes in some sense a believer. Althusser argues that as a result of internalizing a dominant ideology in these ways, subjects become effectively interpellated by ideology. In other words, each and every person feels directly interpellated, or “hailed,” by the dominant ideology and thus conforms to it virtually automatically. Althusser’s concern with embodied practices has been echoed in a wide range of literatures, including those concerned with performance, tradition, and ritual.

Althusser’s conception of ideology has its problems: most importantly, the implication that people are unthinkingly duped into acting in accordance with a single dominant ideology, leaving little theoretical space to understand how resistance, change, and withdrawal of consent are possible. Nonetheless, his work does help to point the way toward understanding how people’s daily actions—the most mundane aspects of how they live their lives as well as the unusual and theatrical (the state ritual on which Kertzer focuses)—come together to produce state subjects who often consent, willingly or not, to a dominant ideology. Incorporating Scott’s insights allows us to think of this consent not as absolutely unquestioning but as an acquiescence that does not openly question, or at least not to the point of refusal to participate. Subordinates go along, at least publicly, because they know they will bear the consequences if they do not. Unlike Scott, who sees this grudging consent principally as a product of actual or threatened repression, Althusser shows how mundane daily practices produce subjects who have imbibed ideological understandings so deeply that, often, little repression is required in order to make them conform. In this way, his insights offer an extension to Kertzer’s focus on public ritual."—Representations of Political Power, pages 92-93

<idle musing>
OK; that's a mouthful, but a very important mouthful. I think it explains only too well why we do what we do—depravity aside. We are being programed by society, via what we read, watch, listen to, etc., to act in a certain way. As Christians, it is our responsibility to examine all of these in light of scripture and in prayer. To quote a friend of mine, "Does a fish know it is wet?" We don't usually stop to examine our lives; after all, we are running at 200 MPH already, who has time to stop and think!

To blindly assume that what is tradition, even in the church, is correct is wrong. To assume it is incorrect is just as wrong, but that doesn't seem to be a common problem :) To assume that because something is labeled "Christian" makes it so, is a mistake; we are to be "as wise as serpents, but innocent as doves." We are to be transformed by the internal working of the Spirit, not by the external working of culture.
</idle musing>

By the way, thanks to Michael for extracting this quote from the PDF; it would have taken me forever to type it. The advantages of working for a publisher!

Knowledge equals action?

“. . .cognitive behaviorists teach that is we get things right in our mind we will behave accordingly. With respect to spiritual formation, then, the theory goes like this: the more Bible we learn, the better Christians we should be; the more theology we grasp, the better we will live. Before I say something ridiculous for some of my readers, let me make it clear that I’m a Bible-believing and theologically informed evangelical moderate (I could add a few more labels if needed). But we also need to make this clear: knowing more Bible doesn’t necessarily make me a better Christian. I’ve hung around with enough nasty Bible scholars and enough mean-spirited pastors to know that knowing more Bible does not inevitably create a better Christian. And I’ve known plenty of loving Christians who don’t know the difference between Matthew and John, let alone the differences between Kings and Chronicles.

“The cognitive behaviorist approach denies a biblical theory of the Eikon. We are made as Eikons, we cracked the Eikon (through our will), and the resolution of the problem of cracked Eikons is not simply through the mind. It is through the will, the heart, the mind, and the soul—and the body, too. No matter how much Bible we know, we will not be changed until we give ourselves over to what Augustine called ‘faith seeking understanding.’ The way of Jesus is personal, and it is relational, and it is through the door of loving God and loving others. The mind is a dimension of our love of God (heart, soul, mind, and strength), but it is not the only or even the first door to open.”— A Community Called Atonement, page 144-145.

Bibliolatry

“One of the first things we need to see about the faith of Christians is that they had their Christian faith before they had the Bible. Telford Work, a gifted scholar, makes just this point:

While the Bible is basic to Christianity, it is also marginal—in that God alone occupies the center of the faith, and that both belief in God and the believing community predate and will succeed Scripture’s present forms and roles.[Living and Active, page 316]

“At the center of the Christian faith is the Trinity, and the gospel and atonement are about restoring cracked Eikons to this Trinitarian God. Beginning our understanding of Scripture with the Trinity is to claim the personal nature of everything Christian. Whenever the Bible replaces the Trinity, we have bibliolatry. The first Christians believed that God’s story entered a new chapter with Jesus, and they were living in that story before they sat down to write it. So we need to get this straight: our faith finds expression in Scripture but that faith is in the Trinitarian God and not in the Bible. Our faith is in the Bible in the sense that in it we hear the Trinitarian God whom we have come to know.”—A Community Called Atonement, Page 143

Real eschatology

“The Revelation of St. John, regardless of the sort of eschatology one brings to the text, is driven by two themes: that someday God will establish justice and that this justice will be established, ironically, by the Lamb, the one who suffered injustice, who will be on the throne, reversing every form of unjust power ever seen.”— A Community Called Atonement, p. 132

Return from Vacation

We got back from vacation on Tuesday night, as you probably gathered from the resumption of posts on Wednesday. We spent the 2 weeks visiting our daughter, son-in-law, and grandkids in Grand Marais, MN, and our son in Bloomington, MN.

We had a grand time. Ryan, Joel, and I spent 3 days backpacking on the Superior Hiking Trail. Ryan and I did a section of it last year from Lutsen to Grand Marais. This year we started at the west end of the Split Rock loop and hiked to Highway 1, about 34 miles. Well, actually for us it was closer to 35 or 36, since we took a wrong turn in Tettegouche State Park and followed the wrong trail for over a half mile before discovering our error. I won’t say who missed the turn, but I’ve known him all my life : )

This part of the trail is more heavily traveled than the part we did last year, but that is probably because it is closer to Duluth. There are some beautiful Lake Superior overlooks where you can see across the lake to Wisconsin and the Apostle Islands. There are also several beautiful overlooks on inland lakes. Joel took some pictures at Bear Lake which I hope to post once he gets them back (no, I didn’t take a camera; I always forget I have one).

After the backpacking, I got to spoil my 2.5 year old grandson and 7 month old granddaughter. Joshua likes to play “apple basketball” which consists of taking windfall apples (of which there are many) and giving them to you to throw through the hoop. He tries too, with hilarious results. The apples are good for about 2 tosses before they come apart on the concrete.

From there we journeyed to Bloomington. We stayed with some friends of Ryan’s, Kevin and Martha. We had a good time with them, talking, biking, and playing with a variety of musical instruments. Ryan is a part of the Bethany House of Prayer and lives on the Bethany campus. Thursday night he and a few others always gather at the gazebo on campus and have a time of singing and prayer. We got there about 8:30 and stayed until midnight, when the curfew shut them down. Nick managed to break two strings on his guitar, but someone else went back to their room and got another guitar for him. He told us he only breaks strings when he plays with Ryan, due to Ryan’s forceful drumming.

Sunday night we moved a piano for another friend of Ryan’s. I haven’t moved a piano for a while, but we had a four-wheeled dolly and enough people, so it went well. Afterwards, Debbie and I talked for a long time to the mom about living dead to self and alive in Christ Jesus, while the others used the piano to “sing and make melody unto the Lord” in another room. Later they joined us as we continued the theme until the wee hours of the morning.

It was a good vacation, but it is good to be back, too. Now, if I can just get out from under all the backlogged e-mails and blog posts. . .

What is justice?

“For the follower of Jesus, justice is not defined by the Magna Carta, the U.S. Constitution, Kant’s categorical imperative, or any other social formation of law. It is defined by Jesus by the Spirit—and we learn of its Spirit-directedness through the Bible.

“Some will say that this is too religious, that it is too Christian, or that it is not practicable for a pluralistic society. I care about none of those criticisms, not because I don’t think working in the public square requires common sense and even agreement on the U.S. Constitution for amicable discourse, but because we need as Christians to recover what we think the Bible says ‘justice’ really is: the conditions that obtain when humans are right with God, with self, with others, and with the world.”—A Community Called Atonement, p. 125

Limited atonement?

“So I conclude that the Bible does teach penal substitution: Jesus identified with us so far ‘all the way down’ that he died our death, so that we, being incorporated into him, might partake in his glorious, life-giving resurrection to new life. He died instead of us (substitution); he died a death that was the consequence of sin (penal). But, here again, this is not enough; it is just not enough to express atonement through the category of penal substitution.

“If we limit atonement to this category, we have an atonement that is nothing more than an important theodicy: it explains how God can eliminate sin justly, but it only explains the wrath-to-death problem, and that is not all there is to atonement.”— A Community Called Atonement, p. 113

<idle musing>
OK, I know the title of this post is misleading...but I did it on purpose. I figured it might get people to read the quote, and it is worth reading. Atonement is far more than a legal fiction, far more than a "wrath-to-death problem." Atonement is Christ for us; Christ in us...
</idle musing>

In Christ

“Everything good happens to the Christian by virtue of union with Christ. Nothing makes this clearer than the ‘in Christ’ theme of Paul’s letters...Jesus identifies with us and we gain access to everything he is by being incorporated into him, by entering into this ‘in Christ’ realm. Every theory of the atonement emerges from this central, life-giving identification for incorporation Atonement is what happens to a human being who is united with Christ. Union with Christ, in other words, is the foundation of atonement, and those who are so in union form the new community where cracked Eikons can be restored to God, self, others, and the world.”— A Community Called Atonement, pages 109-110 (italics his).

More than juridical

“To affirm a juridical element in the atonement does not mean, however that we should reduce the atonement to juridical elements, to law court scenes, or to notions of personal forgiveness of sins. When I speak about the juridicizing of the atonement, I have in mind a form of reductionism that limits the divine-human relationship to juridical categories, and that views the cross solely in terms of laws, infractions, judicial pronouncements, forgiveness, and punishment”—Hans Boersma, quoted in A Community Called Atonement, p. 95

And they're off!

Yep, I'm off on vacation for 2 weeks, visiting kids and grandkids in Minnesota. Debbie and I are looking forward to it. As part of the fun, Ryan (our son), Joel (son-in-law), and myself are going backpacking for a few days. We were planning on hiking the Border Route Trail, but Joel found out yesterday that it is closed because of the drought. Apparently there is no water along the trail and they don't want hikers dehydrating. So, it looks like we will be hiking along the Superior Hiking Trail again. Mind you, it is 200+ miles long and we only did about 50 of it last year, so it will be a new section :) From what I can see, there is a shortage of water on it too, but there are enough beaver ponds and bigger rivers that we should be alright.

I may or may not have Internet during the next 2 weeks, so this blog may lie fallow for that time.

Double imputation

"If I may be so bold, the singular contribution of the Reformation doctrine of atonement and justification was that of double imputation. Justification is the courtroom declaration of God that an individual human is forgiven and in good standing with God. This declaration could occur, the Reformation thinkers argued, because of God;s imputing a human's sin to Christ and then imputing Christ's active obedience and righteousness to that human. A consistent understanding of the Reformation's theory of justification is that it is bound up with double imputation.

"I not only agree with double imputation, I up it. I think being 'in Christ' involves multiple imputations: every thing we are is shuffled to Christ and all that Christ can offer is shuffled to us. It is that big. he became what we are so that we could become what he is..."—A Community Called Atonement, p. 90 (italics his)

<idle musing>
Amen to that. I am convinced that we sell the atonement short, stopping with mere forensic statements of righteousness. The atonement is much more than a forensic decision; it is new life! New life in Christ—death to self in order that we might experience the true life of Christ in us. "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!" 1 John 3:1
</idle musing>

Why Passover instead of Yom Kippur?

“By choosing Passover instead of Yom Kippur to explain his death, Jesus chooses the images of divine protection and liberation. He offers himself—in death—to absorb the judgment of God on behalf of his followers so he can save his people from their sins. His is the blood of the lamb that will secure his followers for the kingdom of God.

“No one would argue that this is all there is to the death of Jesus, but one must begin right here: Jesus’ act at the Last Supper declares that his death is atoning, that his blood is like the Passover blood, that his blood absorbs the judgment of God against sin and systemic violence, that his death will save and liberate his followers from their own sins, and that his death will create the new covenant community around him.”—A Community Called Atonement, p. 86