JOLLYBLOGGER

Better to be 500 Years Behind than 5 Minutes Behind

I found the following quote attributed to Joseph Sobran.  The "quote-r" doesn't reference the original source and I'm not familiar with Sobran so if anyone knows the original source please do chime in.  Sobran said he

"had rather be in a church that is 500 years behind the times tha one that is five minutes behind the times, huffing and puffing, trying to catch up."

Thanks to commenter DT for below for setting me straight.   What I had quoted above is apparently a bit off - maybe done from the reader's memory.  Here's the actual quote:

"It can be exalting to belong to a church that is five hundred years behind the times and sublimely indifferent to fashion; it is mortifying to belong to a church that is five minutes behind the times, huffing and puffing to catch up."

Also, DT gave the original source for the quote - an article called "Notes for the Reactionary of Tomorrow."  I started reading that article and it is long, but very profound, especially for those who want an insight into the nature of conservatism.

The Girl Effect

I found this fascinating.  Dan Heath at Made To Stick quotes a study as follows:

“When women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of it into their families, as compared to only 30 to 40 percent for a man.”

And references this video:

Don't know what to do with what I learned on that yet, but it is intriguing.  I am thinking of the whole micro-loan movement with Kiva and such, and this adds another layer to it - microloans seem to have a great positive influence on cultural change, and it seems that maybe there is a more targeted way to effectively engage in micro-loans - invest in a girl.

On a sidenote - I'll blog on this from Mike Metzger later - but I just want to mention that he makes the intriguing comment that social engagement often fosters evangelism - I am wondering if there is anything we can learn from the whole microloan movement and the girl effect that we can transfer back here to America in such a way that it fosters evangelistic success, rather than seeks to replace it?

What is up with Scientology today?

I was scanning Digg this morning and it is filled with posts about Scientology.  This is a screen grab of the top Digg stories as of 10:15am today.  I know there is a Tom Cruise video out there somewhere on scientology, but I am wondering if anything else has happened.  Whatever it is, the Digg'ers are sure stirred up about it today.

Also, off topic but note that what John Gibson said about Heath Ledger's death.  The folks from Jonesboro Baptist have already jumped on this too - bangs head against wall.

Around the Jollysphere 12-13-07

I'm going to try to dust off an old thing I used to do - a link list called "Around the Jollysphere."  I used to do this and then let it fall by the wayside.  I have accumulated quite a lot of links in my del.ici.ous folders and saved rss feeds so I think I can make a go of this.  As I do this I'll try to separate it into categories and share with you some of the best things I have read.  I'm not going to have set categories, but you can expect that each time I do this I'll have some theology/biblical/Christian living links, cultural stuff, and a bit of sports stuff (especially during football season).  I also will share some stuff on diet and fitness as this something I have been very consumed with over the last few months and have quite a bit of material on.  So, without further ado (or is it adieu?) . . .

Theological Goodness

John Barlow has a good quote from Samuel Johnson.  It wasn't written in a theological context but is too good not to mention here:

"Hume and other skeptical innovators are vain men and will gratify themselves at any expense. Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity, so they have betaken themselves to error: Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull."

Glenn Lucke gets caught quoting the Bible on the the gospel and the kingdom.  Some of the brethren are troubled that some of the brethren seem to be defining the gospel in terms of the Kingdom of God.  So, Glenn does the unthinkable and searches the Scriptures on the matter.  Be sure and read the post and then look at a few other comments that Glenn made in response to me.  I understand the fear - some have used the "gospel of the kingdom" as an excuse to abandon the historical (biblical) teachings on justification.  But an errant understanding of the relationship of gospel and kingdom does not mean we abandon that which the Scripture plainly teaches - the gospel is the gospel of the kingdom

And of course, if we were still allowed to quote Tim Keller, we might find some wisdom.  But since we can't do that I'll quote Tony Stiff who quotes you-know-who as follows: 

“In general, I don’t think we’ve done a good job at developing ways of communicating the gospel that include both salvation from wrath by propitiation and the restoration of all things. Today, writing accessible presentations of the gospel should not be the work of marketers but the work of our best theologians.” Tim Keller, The Gospel and the Supremacy of Christ in a Postmoderd World (pg. 111)

 

This is what gets to me - Christians just love to fight over things that shouldn't be fought over.  The "gospel is the kingdom" guys want to deny or downplay propitiation in favor of the redemption of all things.  The propitiation guys are afraid that the restoration guys are going to lose propitiation so they don't want to talk about it.  The gospel is both - let's run with it.

And here's a good quote from Michael Bird that sets a correct trajectory for discussing the gospel:

"When Christians speak of salvation, they telll a story. It is a story that stretches from even before the creation of the world to its final redemption, when the plan of salvation conceived by God from eternity is to come to fulfillment. While God's dealings of old with God's chosen people, Israel, play an important role in this story, ultimately it revolves around Jesus Christ and his death on the cross."

David Brondos, Fortress Introduction to Salvation and the Cross (Philadelphia: Fortress, 2007), p.1.

The media didn't give us the straight scoop on the gospel of Judas story - I can't believe it . . .

Once again I find myself flummoxed and befuddled, dazed and confused, shocked and chagrined.

Last year there was a big hoop-de-do about the Gospel of Judas, a newly found third century religious text which shed "new light" on the Jesus story.  April D. Deconick summarizes why this was such big news:

The shocker: Judas didn’t betray Jesus. Instead, Jesus asked Judas, his most trusted and beloved disciple, to hand him over to be killed. Judas’s reward? Ascent to heaven and exaltation above the other disciples.

Well, now come to find out that's not exactly nor precisely what the document said.  We were told that the gospel of Judas makes Judas the hero. However, the play was reviewed, and after further review, the ruling on the field was reversed.  The ruling on the field was that number 87 for the team in white was guilty of holding, but it turns out that number 46 for the blue team was guilty of a chop block.  In other words, Judas is not the hero, he's a demon, according to the "gospel" that bears his name.  It appears that the National Geographic Society scholars who did the original translation committed some egregious errors. Here's Deconick again:

So what does the Gospel of Judas really say? It says that Judas is a specific demon called the “Thirteenth.” In certain Gnostic traditions, this is the given name of the king of demons — an entity known as Ialdabaoth who lives in the 13th realm above the earth. Judas is his human alter ego, his undercover agent in the world. These Gnostics equated Ialdabaoth with the Hebrew Yahweh, whom they saw as a jealous and wrathful deity and an opponent of the supreme God whom Jesus came to earth to reveal.

This is terrible - pretty soon I might starting doubting what I read in the newspapers or hear on the evening news - consider my bubble burst!

End of snark - Deconick's article in the NYT is a good read, particularly as she explains how the error in translation happened - it's a good report on how scholarship was compromised in pursuit of a journalistic scoop.

HT - Barlow Farms

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Tags: Religion, theology, Christian, Christianity, gnostic, gnosticism, gnostic gospels, Judas, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Gospel of Judas

A Sign of the Times

Wow, talk about a picture that paints a thousand words - (HT - Digg)

Network Television R.I.P.

Most everyone knows about the writer's strike in Hollywood.  Marc Andreessen has a couple of posts up about the writer's strike and potential effects here and here (HT - Richard Florida).

It's all pretty interesting.  I know a number of folks who think television is the spawn of Satan and will probably rejoice in these misfortunes that are befalling the denizens of the city of iniquity, i.e. Hollywood.

Personally I'm only a little bit interested in the strike itself, as I only have a few programs I really follow, but if those programs go off the air it should take me about 20 minutes to deal with it and move on with my life.  I'm a bit bummed that 24 might not make it back in January and I really enjoy the new show Chuck, so I'll miss that if it goes away.  Oh yeah, I'll probably lose lot's of sleep wondering what happens to the castaways on Lost if that doesn't make it back. 

Other than that, for me the highest purpose of a television is show college football games so as long as the writer's strike doesn't affect Bowl season and next year's football season I should be fine.

But, all that silliness aside, Andreessen has an analysis worth paying attention to.  He says this:

The writers' strike, and the studios' response to the strike, may radically accelerate a structural shift in the media industry -- a shift of power from studios and conglomerates towards creators and talent.

Some interesting stuff in Esquire Magazine

On the one hand I find futurism and lists of superlatives fascinating and interesting, and on the other hand I take them with a grain of salt no matter how cool and cutting edge they seem.  So with that in mind, here's a couple of articles I found in Esquire Magazine online that are interesting.

Six Ideas That Will Change the World - how can you not find electronic skin, machines that fix themselves and a new plastic made from orange peels interesting?

The Best and Brightest 2007 - another one of those lists of people who are changing/will change the world.

Informational Cascades

I may be late to the party on this one but I came across a concept I hadn't really given any thought to recently - its the idea of informational cascades.  John Tierney of the New York Times explains it this way:

We like to think that people improve their judgment by putting their minds together, and sometimes they do. The studio audience at “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” usually votes for the right answer. But suppose, instead of the audience members voting silently in unison, they voted out loud one after another. And suppose the first person gets it wrong.

If the second person isn’t sure of the answer, he’s liable to go along with the first person’s guess. By then, even if the third person suspects another answer is right, she’s more liable to go along just because she assumes the first two together know more than she does. Thus begins an “informational cascade” as one person after another assumes that the rest can’t all be wrong.

Because of this effect, groups are surprisingly prone to reach mistaken conclusions even when most of the people started out knowing better, according to the economists Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer and Ivo Welch. If, say, 60 percent of a group’s members have been given information pointing them to the right answer (while the rest have information pointing to the wrong answer), there is still about a one-in-three chance that the group will cascade to a mistaken consensus.

I came across that doing a bit of research on Gary Taubes book Good Calories, Bad Calories and Tierney uses informational cascades as an explanation for the conventional wisdom that a high-carb low-fat diet is good for you, when a massive body of research says otherwise.

Christians Aren't Part of the Perpetually Offended

How many times have you seen or heard Christians being ridiculed or lied about or something like that and then seen or heard Christians say something along the lines of "if they said the same things about _____________________ (Muslims, women, etc.) there would be outrage."  In other words, we ask why it is that people can get away with defaming Christians, but not others.

Aaron Earls at WorldMagBlog has about the best response for that I have ever read.  In reply to the now (in)famous acceptance speech of Kathy Griffin where she chose not only to not thank Jesus, but to mock him, Aaron says this:

Catholic League president Bill Donohue is calling for action and saying that like other celebrities who offend, Griffin should "pay a similar price." (Isn't being Kathy Griffin enough of a punishment?) Donohue said if the comment had referenced Muhammad "there would have been a very different reaction from the crowd and from the media who covered this event. To say nothing of the Muslim reaction.” But isn't that the point - that we aren't part of the perpetually offended (emphasis mine).

That's it - he expresses what I have intuitively known for years but have not been able to articulate.  We say that Christians are different, and we are, and one of the main ways we are different from the world is that we don't take offense at offensive behavior or treatment.  We are the people who love our enemies, who bless when cursed, who pray for our persecutors.  We follow the one who only wanted forgiveness to be shown to those who crucified Him.

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Tags: Religion, theology, Christianity, Christian, forgiveness, Kathy Griffin