Category: Of Random Interest

In 2 Corinthi­ans 6:14, Paul explains why Chris­tians should­n’t get roman­ti­cal­ly entan­gled with some­one who does­n’t share their deep­est val­ues. Every year it seems that I have to ham­mer this into stu­dents’ heads. They’re involved in fool­ish rela­tion­ships and they just can’t get (or refuse to get) why it’s a bad idea.

So I was thrilled to stum­ble upon Chris Rock’s Big­ger and Black­er spe­cial on Com­e­dy Cen­tral. He had a bit that expressed the under­ly­ing log­ic beau­ti­ful­ly (if you are famil­iar at all with Mr. Rock­’s work you will be unsur­prised to hear that I have edit­ed the text slight­ly for fam­i­ly-friend­li­ness):

What­ev­er you into, your woman got­ta be into, too, and vice ver­sa… or the [thing] ain’t gonna work. lt ain’t gonna work.

That’s right. lf you born-again, your woman got­ta be born-again, too.

lf you a crack­head, your woman got­ta be a crack­head, too… or the [thing] won’t work.

You can’t be like, ”l’m going to church, where you going?” ”Hit the pipe!”

That rela­tion­ship ain’t going nowhere.

Two crack­heads can stay togeth­er for­ev­er.

Stu­dents take note. When stand-up the­olo­gians and stand-up come­di­ans make the same argu­ments you know your posi­tion is inde­fen­si­ble.

Some­time last year I read a help­ful lit­tle book called “Under­stand­ing God’s Will.” I googled up the author, one Kyle Lake (pas­tor of the church David Crow­der attends–Uni­ver­si­ty Bap­tist in Waco), and emailed him a short note thank­ing him for tak­ing the time to write the book. He wrote back to me and said thanks, which I thought was pret­ty classy of him.

So I was pret­ty shocked this morn­ing to read about his death. He was about to bap­tize some­one and he reached to adjust the micro­phone which then sent a cur­rent through his body, killing him in the bap­tistry.

Wow. He was about my age and he just dropped like that while doing a fair­ly rou­tine part of his job.

My heart goes out to his fam­i­ly and his church. This has to be an incred­i­bly hard time for them. And that poor woman who was get­ting baptized–I won­der how she’s pro­cess­ing all this?

Anne Rice (the vam­pire nov­el­ist) has become a Chris­t­ian.

“For the last six months,” she says, “peo­ple have been send­ing e‑mails say­ing, ‘What are you doing next?’ And I’ve told them, ‘You may not want what I’m doing next’.” We’ll know soon. In two weeks, Anne Rice, the chron­i­cler of vam­pires, witch­es and—under the pseu­do­nym A. N. Roquelaure—of soft-core S&M encoun­ters, will pub­lish “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt,” a nov­el
about the 7‑year-old Jesus, nar­rat­ed by Christ him­self. “I promised,” she says, “that from now on I would write only for the Lord.”

Inci­den­tal­ly, her nov­el is get­ting rave reviews.

The advance notices say she’s pulled it off: Kirkus Reviews’ starred rave pro­nounces her Jesus “ful­ly believ­able.”

You might also want to check the Wikipedia arti­cle on her.

I recent­ly had occas­sion to be pum­meled at Halo 2 by Dylan, who is quite pos­si­bly the world’s worst veg­e­tar­i­an.

You see, he hates veg­eta­bles. He thinks they taste nasty.

He does­n’t have any con­vic­tions about the moral supe­ri­or­i­ty of veg­etable con­sump­tion. He does­n’t seem to have any wor­ries about the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of a car­niv­o­rous soci­ety. It’s not a spir­i­tu­al thing for him. He does­n’t real­ly fit into any of the stan­dard veg­e­tar­i­an cat­e­gories.

He just does­n’t eat meat. He appar­ent­ly sur­vives on assort­ed junk food.

Why does he live this way? Because he was raised a veg­e­tar­i­an and now can’t digest meat and does­n’t want to go to the trou­ble of train­ing his body to process meat again–I’m not quite sure what that would entail, but it sounds as though unpleas­ant diges­tive moments are involved.

I just thought that was hilar­i­ous. A veg­e­tar­i­an who hates veg­eta­bles. 🙂

By the way, you can buy that bumper stick­er at http://bumperart.com/ if you’re a bumper stick­er sort of per­son.

I received an email from a stu­dent ask­ing whether it was okay to “put God to the test.”

I just came back from a strange church ser­vice, and I have a ques­tion. Late­ly, I have been learn­ing quite a bit about God up there. The pas­tor’s wife shout­ed out loud that the Lord wants us to “test” him in prayer, mean­ing see if our prayers are answered. I was con­fused about this state­ment, as I recalled the temp­ta­tions of Christ, when Satan tempts Jesus, and Jesus quotes scrip­ture, “thou shalt not test the Lord your God.” Am I get­ting caught up in a tech­ni­cal­i­ty, or is there some mer­it to this claim, which I do not under­stand? I can see how God would want us to pray and ask for proof in life, but I feel such a strong injus­tice to this thought. Any thoughts?

As I fre­quent­ly field this ques­tion or a vari­ant there­of, I thought my response might be of more gen­er­al inter­est.

Are we to test God or not?

In Deut 6:16 we are com­mand­ed not to put God to the test. In Malachi 3:10 God tells us to test him.

Is this a con­tra­dic­tion? No, not at all. The Hebrew word in Deuteron­o­my 6:16 is nac­ah http://www.blueletterbible.org/cgi-bin/words.pl?word=05254
where­as the word in Malachi 3:10 is bachan
http://www.blueletterbible.org/cgi-bin/words.pl?word=0974

So what we have is two words in Hebrew that can both be trans­lat­ed “test.” Some tests are for­bid­den and oth­ers are com­mand­ed.

So what are we for­bid­den to do? Jesus tells us not to tempt God in Luke 4:12 (quot­ing Deuteron­o­my 6:16). If we look up Deut 6:16 (“Do not tempt the Lord your God as you did at Mas­sah”) we will notice that it is a ref­er­ence to Exo­dus 17, where­in the Israelites demand that God do a spe­cif­ic thing to prove he is with them. That’s the same temp­ta­tion Satan set before Jesus: make God per­form an action of your own choos­ing.

How­ev­er, we read in Malachi 3:10 that God desires us to test his good­ness and his faith­ful­ness. We are to expect God to per­form actions of his choos­ing.

That makes sense. In the first case we are giv­ing orders to God, in the sec­ond case we are receiv­ing orders from God. In the first case we are try­ing to be God our­selves, in the sec­ond case we are allow­ing God to be God.

Per­haps we could phrase the dis­tinc­tion thus:
“Don’t try to tell God what he ought to do, but expect God to do what he has promised to do.”

So in your spe­cif­ic case, it all depends on what sort of prayers you’re expect­ing God to answer.

Did that help clear it up?