The Two Faithful Spies

When we look at the Old Test we see Moses sending 12 spies into the Promised Land...not a good move...God had already told them that He would fight for them...God already showed them a year earlier that "giants" were no problem for Him...He was the giant killer. God took down the super power nation of that time...He took down the "giant" Egypt...and totally destroyed her.

Sending in spies was a sign of unbelief towards God.

Joshua also sent in spies...only two...why have the ten witnesses of doubt come along?

These men weren't going in to see if they should take the land, they were going in to see how they were going to go about doing it.

How about you? Do you ever go into the enemies territory? Do you spy out the land to see how you can take captives for your King?

Or are you like many Christians today, afraid of stepping out of your comfort zone...because hey...there are giants outside of that zone aren't there?

Christians need to start praying for specific unbelievers...then we need to put leather under our prayers and start building relationships with unbelievers, relationships that include the gospel, relationships that work towards making the unbeliever a believer...this takes work...it takes sacrifice...it takes stepping out of our comfort zone...

We are told to make disciples of the nations...and yet the nations are not busting down the door to get into the church...hmmm...maybe the door works both ways...maybe we are supposed to go into the world with the good news...novel idea isn't it.

Servant Leaders

Below is from a church planting manuel;...some good food for thought...and deed.

Two key ministries are at the heart of building servant leaders: caring ministries and leadership development. Caring ministries provide a nurturing context for spritual growth. They also provide opportunities for existing and emerging leaders to reach out in practical ways to people in need. The building of Christians into Servant Leaders is never done in a vacuum, much less in a classroom. It is always the combination of spiritual ministry (doing), spiritual maturity (becoming), and instruction (knowing).

If we read how Jesus taught his disciples, we see that he did not educate his disciples in a classroom. A classroom relationship is one in which the students and teachers contact one another on the intellectual point only. They do not live together, eat together, and contact one another socially, emotionally and spiritually as well. Jesus did not set up a classroom relationship between himself and his students nor between his students and one another. Rather, he created communities of learning, where there was plenty of time to work out truth in discussion, dialogue and in application. Therefore, the crucial (though not exclusive) venue for discipleship is in communities, not classes. That is, fellowship groups, friendships, not academic settings alone.

New Blog Deal

You will notice that I have set up a new format for comments on my blog.

The deal is that if you want to post then you are going to have to put some thought into it.

This doesn't mean thought into certain topics or areas of thought...it means thought into the consistency of your thought processes.

You want to come here and attack the Christian faith...thats fine...but you had better put some thought into "why" you use logic, science, and morality to do so.

If you just "use" these things because they work and don't even try to justify them...then you will remain silent...with my help of course.

Since this is my personal Web Log...then I will decide what thought goes here.

This is not some hang out for atheist to hang out their thoughts...especially thoughts that steal from the Triune God...and refuse to give thanks.

What I find funny about all this is I know that there are certain unbelievers out there who will have their nose out of joint for this new format...

...and yet these same people have no problem with supporting the State school systems that fights with all of its might to keep anything of Christianity outside of its doors...while using Christians money to support it.

Full Plate

This is going to be a very busy week...because of this I may not blog very much...see you next week. God bless

Presuppositions And The Body

I heard the following from Pastor Steve Schlissel...very good stuff. [He spoke this at a conference in the Southern United States [thus the squirrel comment].
Presuppositions are very important...they determine “what” facts and “how” facts will be entertained by us. Presuppositions function like preferences or tastes, just as you never go near certain foods [like squirrel] regardless of how well they might be prepared, so presuppositional biases can steer us away from certain approaches or certain truths. We can actually find ourselves filtering them out as we read the bible, we don’t see them because they do not conform to our presuppositions.

Presuppositions can function like;

Teeth and a Mouth• All potential nourishment must first pass through our presuppositions to be made fit for our personal consumption.

Digestive System
• In which a nearly miraculous function occurs out of sight, detecting, sorting, cataloguing while you go about your business.

Tush or Rear End, or Buttock
• Presuppositions are behind and under everything we do.
• We do our life long best to keep them hidden and protected.
• Furthermore you never talk about them in company...or almost never.
• But sometimes we must talk about them, even in polite company because they do effect what we think, and what we believe, and how we act.

Give enough rope...

I heard a Christian apologist once say that if you give the unbeliever enough rope he will eventually hang himself...this statement is so true.

In one of my posts I said that logic rested upon, universals, abstract entities, the immaterial, and absolutes.

One unbeliever responded by saying this about logic...

"No universals, abstract entities, immaterial or spiritual absolutes are involved. In fact, they are scrupulously avoided."

Someone out there please explain to me how logic works without any categories or universals...just individual particulars?

Are thoughts material? If so, then they are material "juice" flowing inside of my head, and since my head is not your head then there is no "law" to judge anyone else logical or illogical.

And there are no absolutes...again then opinion is king...no law of contradiction because no absolute standard in which you judge something truth or non truth.

Logic is impossible if the world were what unbelievers say it is.

But its not the world they profess...its God's world...He made it, and He governs it day by day.

Letter # Two

Kendall,

Thank you for your response. I'll grant that the last paragraph of my letter was pretty bald and I made some leaps without filling in the gaps. But my basic point about the nothingness was this: there is reductionism that you are applying to the Biblical text that has a strong naturalistic aroma it. That kind of reductionism is a modern mood and an epistemological program. It can be applied to any and everything and it has been. It doesn't just stop with higher criticism, it goes on and on like an acid and eats everything that is human if it is applied consistently. But almost no one has the courage to spill these acids with equal opportunity consistency. This is what is so wonderful about Nietzsche. He did. And he despised as cowards and weaklings people who wouldn't face up to implications. So what we get instead are cadres of people who stop believing in Jesus but go on believing that we ought feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, and generally go about doing good. And, it is very difficult to get people to ask themselves questions about "why?" after they have stopped believing. John Wesley and General Booth loved the poor and cared for them (magnificently) because they loved Jesus, and wanted to do what He commanded. They could tell you quite smartly why they did what they did. The basic questions were not a stumbling stone. But try to get a modern secular liberal (for example) to tell you why he wants to care for the poor. He does it out of habit from generations of Chapel going, and it is in his bones. But it is difficult to keep in the heart, because the heart begins to be empty. Caring for the poor is a reflex and a result of homesickness for the old but lost beliefs that warmed his ancestors. The net result is that usually in the end, cynicism, doubt, and exhaustion overwhelm one, and hands on care seems more and more futile. The truth is that caring for the poor is utterly unromantic, and apart from very strong religious impulse, it simply stops being done, or one hopes that impersonal agencies will do the work. That is what I was driving at about people wanting Messianic results without the Messiah (and how in the end, self defeating it is).

It is very difficult in short term to make the points about reason and consciousness, but briefly, if you carry the naturalistic program out with consistency, the very building blocks of knowledge and existence are knocked out. A naturalistic explanation of reason, consciousness and conscience becomes self defeating. The program of naturalism is to SEE THROUGH what men once thought was explicable by recourse to God, and show that it is rather explicable by the immanent and the material (just like the Biblical text). But if reason, consciousness, and conscience can be "explained away" and "seen through", then there is nothing left to explain and nothing left to see. One has at that point "seen through" existence, and existence no longer exists. There is no good reason to stop with your naturalism at the Biblical text. The program should be carried through. I want to push you to some deeper level of consistency. Most people want to be reductionistic in some area or other, and often feel liberated by seeing through THAT, but then find in the end there is a snake in the bottom of the bottle that bites in places where they wanted to be left comfortably alone. But really, one cannot pick and choose and be fair. If naturalism is "true", it is true for the whole field of reality, and not just patch work areas. If Jesus is Lord, He is by definition Lord of ALL, and not just of the mountains or the plains. That's what I mean by cheating. You may be liberated from Fundamentalism, but did you also count on being liberated from the benefits that legitimately flow from God being the Creator and Redeemer (like being the Image of God as a man, and instead being a machine, or at best a highly developed animal)? Did you count on reason being reduced (as a consequence) to atoms crashing into each other in your brain, and therefore thought not being about anything "true", but rather just a secretion (with no truth value at as a result)?

I assume you are not a missionary for mercenary reasons, but if naturalism is "true" why are you a missionary? You seem to have some ethic you are living out, but if Jesus is not the Lord, why the Sam hill are you trying to do something like what the Sermon on the Mount tells you to do? Conscience is another phenomena that the naturalistic program can explain away in wholly sociological terms. Apply your program here. Is there anything unique in your ethical sense that a good reductionistic psychologist or sociologist cannot explain and explain away wholly in terms of conditioning etc.? I think not. Your conscience is in as bad a shape as you seem to think the Church and Christendom are.

You are quite right about modern science being a result of and step child of Christianity. Modern science is based on five assumptions, all of them theological.

"1. The universe is RATIONAL reflecting both the intellect and faithfulness of its Creator.
2. The universe is ACCESSIBLE to us, not a closed book but open to our investigations. Minds created in the image of the Divine mind can understand the universe God created.
3. The universe has CONTINGENCY to it, meaning things could have been different from the way we find them...hence, knowledge comes by observing and testing it.
4. There is such a thing as OBJECTIVE reality. Because God exists and sees and knows everything, there is truth behind everything. Reality has a hard edge to it and does not cave in or shift like sands in response to our opinions, perceptions, beliefs, or anything else.
5. There is a UNITY to the universe. There is an explanation--one God, one equation, or one system of logic--which is fundamental to everything. The universe operates by underlying laws which do not change in an arbitrary fashion from place to place, from minute to minute. There are no loose ends, no real contradictions. At some deep level, everything fits." (from Kitty Ferguson, FIRE IN THE EQUATIONS, Eerdmans 1994)

Now the oddity is, carry through your program of "scientific reductionism" and you destroy every theological assumption that science is based on. You don't just destroy the Biblical text. You destroy the ground you were standing on in the first place. (Father Stanley Jaki has wonderfully given his life to just the study of the Christian roots of modern science, and any and all of his books are wonderful.) Apart from these theological assumptions, science becomes a modern "habit" rather like modern do goodism, but has no real foundation (because the foundation is all in the doctrine of God, of creation, and of providence).

I'll carry on in another letter, this one is getting too long.

Yours,
Rich
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