When this is posted, I will be neck-deep into a great several days in Chevy Chase MD at the
That is the part I love to be involved in. Â Here is the thing I don’t like to do.
I won’t be posting my reflections on
Alas… won’t happen. Â Have a great week and we can interact (if you are still interested) next week. Â If you are in the Chevy Chase area, let me know, maybe we can connect!
Peace, Jim
So, just so we are starting off on the right foot, the title line came from a guy I was speaking to about some of his issues with Jesus’ teaching… Â This will make a lot more sense if you take a look here first. Â And now, without further delay… Part Two…
So, to get a running start, imagine Jesus were to appear in your town today. Now imagine if he made those claims. Imagine him saying, “If you ask, I will do it. If you seek me, you will find me…â€
Can you imagine the expressions on the faces of some of those in the crowd? People would clearly be running down their lists. Those lists of times where God hasn’t’ come through for them, where they asked and didn’t get. When they sought him and didn’t find him.  It would seem that the expressions and thoughts weren’t so different in the crowd around Jesus. Look at what he did next.
He changed tactics. He turned the tables a bit.
“Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
He didn’t deflect, he didn’t recant, and he didn’t avoid their concerns. He asked a different question that  adjusted their viewpoint. In the first few verses we looked at, the people were asking, seeking, and knocking. This is the right approach for us as followers of the Messiah. He leads us, we seek him. So the imagery is right. He has authority over us.
The problem isn’t with that. Most of us that are followers of Jesus get that we are followers of Jesus. The issue arises when we don’t get what we ask for. Especially when it seems like we have some pretty straightforward language that shows we can expect to get what we ask for. Even more so when we deeply believe what we are asking for is fair or right.
So, back to Jesus turning the tables. What he did next is put us in the role of the authority. He asked what we would do if our child asked for something from us. Would we trick them, hurt them, put them in danger? Of course not! Jesus specifically chooses the relationship of parent and child because it isn’t just one of authority, but one where there is authority that is completely bound up in love.
Essentially, he puts us a bit in God’s place.
Smart move, Jesus. Smart move.  🙂
Doing that called on a few things that certainly any parent in that day (or ours) would almost intuitively know.
One is that the parent’s knowledge and experiential pool is greater than a kid’s. That means that there will be things that a child will believe are fine that actually aren’t. For instance, all three of our children, when they were younger, watched Tracy and I when we drove them places and let us know that not only did driving look fun, but that it looked easy. Push a pedal with your foot and turn a wheel with your hands. Done and done.
In light of their understanding of the simplicity of driving, they made many requests of us to simply hand over the keys and let them drive. When you heard them develop their arguments, it was clear that they felt very strongly that it would be fine. Why wouldn’t we just do it?
Obviously in this situation, wiser minds prevailed and so, even when a child cannot understand any reason for the restriction, they cannot drive. The larger knowledge pool wins. Driving is harder than that, it requires more coordination then they had at that age, more focus. Their belief that they were ready didn’t mean they were.
Any parent that allows their child to drive underage wouldn’t be considered a good parent, but a bad one. My point here is not that all of our requests are equivalent to a five year old asking to drive by themselves,  please hear that. To compare a kid wanting to drive and some of the pain that we pray our way through our out of would be a total misunderstanding of my point. My point is rather that even if the child has no understanding of why something is the way it is, or isn’t the way they would prefer, doesn’t mean there is no point, no reason. Just because I feel there is no wisdom or purpose to a decision made by an authority of mine doesn’t mean there isn’t wisdom or purpose.  Sometimes I simply don’t get what I don’t get.
We will close off this discussion on Sunday, check back if you dare!
Okay that was a bit much. Â See you Sunday. Â Or early next week… Or …
Peace, Jim
I get asked about tricky verses a lot. But the guy I was talking to on this day was very upset.  As he told me his story, this frustration was so clear you could almost touch it.  So we started to chat about it.  The two instances he was talking about are recounted in Matt and Luke.  In them, Jesus was talking with a group of people about how things work in the Kingdom of God. How God intended us to live. How in some ways life in the Kingdom of God is very similar to the kingdom of this world and in other ways, it is very different. Let me list both of the instances.
Matt 7.7-8 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
Luke 11.9-10 “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. Â For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
Here we have two fairly straightforward accounts of Jesus talking about how things work with those who follow God. They sound great too. The only problem is that we all have countless examples of when they haven’t been true. Times where we have asked for things that range from the selfish to the selfless. Yes, I have asked for my share of Hokie victories and things to go my way, primarily for my benefit. But I have also asked for things that go far beyond me, very selfless things.  Likely we all have.  Some of those have happened and some have not.
So, either Jesus was wrong, someone got his statement written incorrectly, or I am not looking at the whole picture. As I have spent a lot of time in teachings and on the blog dealing with questions of the accuracy of the biblical scriptures, and I believe Jesus wasn’t wrong, I am going to hone in on the last option. I think we miss the point.
And I think Jesus thought the same thing. Come back Friday and see why I think that.
Peace, Jim
Late last year we started a conversation about some of the more difficult issues that can come up when you are trying to read,reflect on, and live in light of the bible. Â It is beautiful, powerful, transforming. Â But it can also be confusing, frustrating and strange.
How do we handle that tension? We know that even those (myself included) that believe that the bible is God’s word to us don’t follow all of it word for word. Â So what do we make of that?
How do we walk through the many tricky issues that living life through the bible brings up?
What do we make of the writers who claim the bible we read is so inaccurate and wrong that it likely serves no purpose at all other than to make us feel good?
I have heard from many people that they would like to pose some questions and interact over a few of these issues, but that the end of last year was too busy to do so. Â So, let’s get this party started up again!
What issues do you have with the bible or living a life of obedience to it? Â What questions? Â What makes you angry or sad? Â What do you love and appreciate?
Looking forward to the conversation.
Peace, Â Jim
There is a question I get almost all the time when I am interviewed or when someone stops me to ask about the book. Â They inevitably ask why God does things the way he does them. Â God is so different from us in many ways and those differences can make things quite difficult.
It’s a bit like learning a new language.
When I initially took French 1 at Clifton Middle School I walked into a language that made no sense to me. Â My name wasn’t even said the same way. Â The first day I was taught how to ask people whose names I already knew what their names were. Â But we had to start at that basic level. Â We had to learn how to say the letters of the alphabet differently, we had to learn how to blend them into words differently, how to pronounce those words differently. Â Let’s not even get into the conjugation of the verb aller.
But over time more and more made sense. Â Over time I learned the language and what was non-sensical on the first day was an understandable language very quickly.
Learning to understand God is much the same. Â We have to relearn a good bit. Â Go back to basic things we haven’t questioned in years and reflect on them a bit differently, but with God this time. Â And somewhere along the line we stop trying to make God do things our way and we start seeing the wisdom of doing them His way. Â Even when His way seems strange.
I am very grateful to the great folks at
If you are interested, here is the video of that talk…
The Apprentice Week 2 – Jim Pace, guest speaker
Tomorrow, from 11.15 until noon I will be interviewed by Tim Wildmon & Marvin Sanders on the Today’s Issues program. Â It is carried on American Family Radio which is a part of the Christian Radio Network that has over 200 stations and 19 affiliates that tune in and covers 34 states and Canada.
Other than my generalized fear of anyone that is French-Canadian (they all seem like very tough and hardy people that could beat me up without ever losing the cigarette that would be dangling from their lips) I am excited to be able to speak to a very broad listening audience.
If you are interested in tuning in,
My being interviewed on their show doesn’t speak to whether I agree with everything the program would suggest. Â I haven’t agreed with everything on any show I have been on so far. Â That having been said, I am very grateful to Tim and Marvin for having me on and allowing me to chat about issues that I think are critically important to a meaningful expression of our faith.
Peace, Jim
I am a fan of something that is loosely referred to as an “orthogonal
approach” applied to intensely debated social and religious issues.
So I was excited when I saw that
the University of Rochester invoked it in a
debate between science and religion. And while Frank, who would
consider himself a “strident atheist” and myself, a convinced follower
of Jesus, have a number of key points of disagreement, I liked the
overall trajectory of his article.
At least at first. His take was that we need to try to not fall into
the same “us versus them” pattern that can so often derail the
discussion. That by thinking “orthogonally” we can put a right angle
in the discussion and come up with something that is entirely new.
Then I ran across what I run across almost without fail in discussions
with those who would consider themselves commited scientists and
atheists. The issue that comes out and is seemingly not even noticed
is the baseline belief that those with religious belief are more
against the discussion than those without religious belief. That the
religious, with my experience being obviously as a follower of Jesus,
have behaved more poorly in the discussion than our counterparts. Â Essentially, this is more of the same thing. Â Pointing the finger across the aisle. (more…)
Ten years ago, Anne Rice said that  Christ was her Messiah.  The news shocked much of the world (at least the literary world.)
This is because Anne Rice was the best selling author of The Vampire Chronicles among many other titles. With so much of her writing leaning towards the darker corners of our existence, hearing that she accepted the light of Christ was surprising to say the least. Â To date she has sold over 100 million books. Â As a new author myself, that’s quite a feat.
Here is an extended quote from Timothy Keller’s book,
Anne Rice was one person who was startled to discover how weak the case for a merely human “historical Jesus” really is. Rice became famous as the author of Interview with the Vampire and other works… Raised a Catholic, she lost her faith at a secular college, married an atheist, and became wealthy writing novels about Lestat, who is both a vampire and a rock star…
Why did she do it? In the afterword to her new novel, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, she explained that she had begun doing extensive research about the historical Jesus by reading the work of Jesus scholars at the most respected academic institutions. Their main thesis was that the Biblical documents we have aren’t historically reliable. She was amazed at how weak their arguments were.
Some books were no more than assumptions piled on assumptions… Conclusions were reached on the basis of little or no data at all… The whole case for the non-divine Jesus who stumbled into Jerusalem and somehow got crucified… that whole picture which had floated around the liberal circles I frequented as an atheist for thirty years — that case was not made. Not only was it not made, I discovered in this field some of the worst and most biased scholarship I’d ever read.
On Wednesday, she let the Facebook world know that she is calling it quits. Â She has had enough. Â Let me let her say it her way.
As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.
Clearly this is not something she did quickly, it seems she has made a reflected decision and has acted based upon it. She provides some clarification here.
For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to “belong” to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.
On herÂ
My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn’t understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.
What do you think about what she is saying and how she is saying it? Would love to get your thoughts!
I will start off with this. Â I am a fan of Tim Keller.
I don’t always agree with him. Â But then I cannot think of anyone I always agree with. Â But I love several things about him more than I disagree with him in a few theological and practical areas.
1) Â I love that he wrote “T
2) Â I love that Keller’s church,
3) I love that Redeemer Pres. has managed to reach a very diverse group of ages and races. Â Personally, I don’t think I have done as good a job of that as Keller has.
Here, Keller speaks as a part of the
Hope you do to! Â Please let me know if you have any comments/thoughts about what he was speaking about. Â I always love to hear what you are thinking!
Peace.
I have really been struggling with when/if I should write another book.
I have struggled for who knows how many hours over the topics and over the invasive nature of writing. Â It takes time, thought, prayer, struggle, time, time and time.
I happen to love my ministry role at [nlcf] and my family even more that that. Â So, Tracy and I have really struggled with this decision. Â I have a wonderful agent who has helped in my thought process about the book and has never really pushed me either way, several good friends who have helped me work through different ideas and timelines, so I feel like I have had every benefit I could ask for. Â But I still couldn’t decided what to do. Â A couple of weeks ago I decided I needed to take some more time to really decide. Â And through a number of different avenues, I think I have.
I wanted to share an amazing email I got from Bill (who asked that I change his name.) Â He is a minister (in a state that is farther west than Virginia) and is in ministry (of some type) Â 🙂
The reason I am sharing this email is that he states in it the exact reason I started writing the first book. Â If you are interested in reading what he said, take a look after the jump. Â I appreciate his giving me permission to do so. (more…)