The Perfect Pastor? (Understanding and Relating to the Life and Work of a Pastor)

http://barefootmeg.multiply.com/reviews/item/33
Click through for a review of D. Thomas Owsley's book, The Perfect Pastor? (Understanding and Relating to the Life and Work of a Pastor).

Got Faith?

"Because when it comes to faith, everybody has it.  People often tell me they could never have faith, that it is just too hard.  The idea that some people have faith and others don't is a popular one.  But it is not a true one  Everybody has faith.  Everybody is following somebody." -- Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis

I typed up that quote a year and a half ago. I don't remember why I never posted it, but I just checked my drafts "folder" and found it there and figured I'd post it now. 

So what do you think? Does everyone have faith (even if it's just in themselves)?

The Velvet Elvis is an SJ.

While reading Dan Kimball's book, I grew increasingly aware that what the Emergent folk were pulling away from was an SJ mentality.  To be honest, I'm not sure yet what personality type they're pulling toward.  I suspect the toward has more to do with the personality types of the Emergent leaders than the personality types of the so-called "emerging generation" or "emerging culture."  (NF, perhaps?)

I started reading Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis today.  I wasn't even 4 pages into the book when Bell stated this point exactly -- except that he doesn't at all attribute it to a difference in personalities. 

Here's what often happens: Somebody comes along who has a fresh perspective on the Christian faith. People are inspired. A movement starts. Faith that was stale and dying is now alive.  But then the pioneer of the movement -- the painter -- dies and the followers stop exploring.  They mistakenly assume that their leader's words were the last ones on the subject, and they freeze their leader's words.  They forget that as that innovator was doing this or her part to move things along, that person was merely taking part in the discussion that will go on forever.  And so in their commitment to what so-and-so said and did, they end up freezing the faith. -- Rob Bell, in Velvet Elvis

SJ's are the protectors.  They value tradition and continuity.  They are the ones who remind us how things have been done in the past, who help us remember and adhere to the rules, and who help us to stay on the pathway that we set out upon.  It makes sense that they "freeze" the faith at a point because that's the gift/personality that God has bestowed upon them.  Without them it would be easy for us to lose focus and wander away from the goals that we set out toward. 

NF's are visionaries.  Their gift/personality type is one that sees new possibilities, new ways of looking at things, new means of approaching old topics.  

NT's are intellectuals.  They analyze the ways things have been done and how they might be done better.  They innovate and challenge the status quo.  

All of these (and SP's as well, of course -- people the Emerging churches are often particularly targeting) are important and valuable perspectives and all are needed to keep a balance.  When a church is made up of all SJ's then yes, it will seem very dry and boring and dead.  It might not seem dead to the SJ's themselves, but to all of the other personality types that are biding their time in that congregation, it could be quite miserable. But when a church is made up all of NF's, anything goes.  You might never know where you'll be from one week to another (theologically, emotionally, etc.) and that might be exciting and refreshing for NF's, but for other personality types, that could be quite unsettling and even disturbing.  

God made us with different personality types so that we can learn from each other, so we can balance each other, so that we can guide one another and so that we can love one another despite our differences.  We need to learn to listen to each other rather than advocating one personality type over and above another. 

Soul Types: Matching Your Personality and Spiritual Path

http://barefootmeg.multiply.com/reviews/item/31
In the book Soul Types, the authors, Hirsh and Kise, link personality types and preferred methods of pursuing spirituality. Click through on the link above to read Meg's review.

Why Pharaoh Falls Squarely Into the Calvinist/Arminianist Camp(s)

I just read Wink's post entitled, I'm Sorting It Out, on the topic of Our Free Will vs. God's Sovereignty.  I was going to add a reply there when I realized that what I'd really like to post is my "Pharaoh list" (which is in the form of a jpg). But I generally try to avoid adding html to other people's blogs (off Multiply, that is) because more often than not it's either rejected or causes the reply to get held for moderation.  So I decided to post it here along with an excerpt from the essay I wrote on the "Pharaoh list".  This excerpt was originally written in January 2002.

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At some point, in reading the story of Moses, I realized a little detail that comes up several times, but that had never jumped out at me before.  In fact, I’ve never heard this preached on nor have I ever heard anyone bring it up in discussion.  Its one of those little details that you don’t tend to notice when you break a story down into chunks to study and its one of those items that you tend to notice one side of more than the other (depending on your doctrinal leanings). The problem is this, when Moses asks Pharaoh to let his people go, at times the text says that Pharaoh hardened his heart and at other times it says that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.  Here’s a chart showing the flipping flopping back and forth in the assigning of responsibility (as in, who made Pharaoh’s heart hard):

So, which is it?  Does Pharaoh have free will?  Is he able to decide when he is going to harden his heart and when he is not?  Or is he just a puppet and God can pull the right strings to make him harden his heart?

Perhaps both may be true.

First of all, let me point out that in Exodus 9:34 it not only states that Pharaoh (and his officials) hardened his heart, but the statement was also made that Pharaoh “sinned again.”  Very clearly Pharaoh is responsible for his actions.  He had the choice, he made it, he sinned, and he is therefore guilty.  If he had no say in what path he had chosen, then it would be unfair for him to bear guilt.  Pharaoh had the free will to choose whether he would harden his heart or not.  

But note that just a few verses later, in Exodus 10:1, God claims responsibility for what the text just got done saying was Pharaoh’s responsibility.  

But how can it be both that God has acted and that Pharaoh has acted in the very same situation (in the same act!)?  And how can one be responsible for what the other has done?  The Bible makes it very clear that both God and Pharaoh are fully responsible for the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart.  Now if that doesn’t give you a headache, you’re probably not getting it yet.

Those that say that people have free will are absolutely correct.  And those that say that God predestines our lives are absolutely correct.  Here, in one story, both sides are shown to be true.

Perhaps you could try thinking about it this way.  The Pointillists were known for painting pictures using only primary colors.  They would paint by using very short brush strokes (or points) and when the completed painting was viewed from a distance, the eye blended the colors bringing out a plethora of colors beyond the simple few that the artist used.  Imagine that any one of us is an ant and we are viewing the picture from several different parts of the room.  The ant on the far side of the room might see a spot of orange, whereas the ants that are crawling across that section of painting might instead see either only red, or only yellow.  Now imagine that red is predestined acts and that acts done of our own free will are yellow. The ant that sees the orange is the one that sees things most clearly, though really, its still a bit fuzzy.  Orange indicates that both colors are present. The ant standing on the red dot has a skewed view, as does the one standing on the yellow dot.

The analogy is certainly not perfect.  It might be more accurate to imagine an artist mixing both red and yellow paint together to create orange.  What is created is now predestination and free-will combined so seamlessly that they have formed a new color, or a new status of predestination and freedom of choice.  In orange, one could say that red is fully there and yellow is fully there.  And yet neither can be seen because they have become a third color.  Predestination can be “true” and free-will can be “true” but neither one is fully accurate on its own because they are only describing components of a more full reality.

Christians and the Environment

Two years ago, in a gals Bible study that I was leading, one of the gals went off on a completely unprovoked tirade against the crazies who believe in global warming.  (More details on what happened can be found here.)  That incident lead me to try to find a book that we could perhaps study in Sunday school that would help us wade through the topic of Christians and the environment. (Several of those books are reviewed here.)  After choosing the book that I thought would work best given our congregation, and then having the book shot down by the session (ruling body in the church), I decided that rather than giving up, I'd just write a Bible study on the topic.  I have high hopes that with the Bible as the primary source for the study, and our congregation as the primary audience, we might finally be able to tackle this topic in a positive way.  (I personally believe that not tackling it is only leading to disunity in our church and dealing with it will not only bring unity but a better witness of our church to outsiders as well.)

I'm just beginning the 9th chapter of the study.  I have, for the most part, kept the introductions to the chapters very short, wanting the Bible to do most of the talking.  But I'm coming to the point where I want to "pull it all together."  Part of what I hope to address in this 9th chapter is the non-Christian environmentalists' take on non-environmentalist Christians. (Wow, say that 5 times fast.)  In re-reading the introduction I've written, I wonder if my characterization of environmentalists is fair.  I "pick" on the New-Age-y environmentalists a bit, primarily because these are the only type of environmentalists that exist in the minds of many of the people in our congregation.  (You know, all environmentalists are tree-huggers and goddess worshippers right?  ... Right.  Whatever.  Let me just tell you, when they met me and my husband, and we weren't singing love songs to the flowers, they really couldn't figure out how we could call ourselves environmentalists.  We've really been a mind bend for them.) My goal, therefore, is to still "pick on" the tree huggers, but I want to do it fairly.  Does that make sense?  In other words, I want to zero in on them still, but I want to do so in a way that's still fairly accurate and fair to who they are and what they believe. 

So I thought I'd post the intro. here and get some feedback.  I'm looking specifically for first reactions.  How does what I say about non-Christian environmentalists hit you? Is it a fair representation?  Am I missing anything?  

Feel free to throw in your thoughts on the questions I ask at the end as well.  

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Peter wrote to the Christians in what is now Turkey, saying “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” (1 Peter 2:12)  

Think about the pagans (or non-Christians) that we regularly come into contact with.  Given that they’re not Christians, it’s quite unlikely that they’d know anything about how we worship or what doctrine we believe in.  Those are things that they’d really only know if they attended church events with us.  On the contrary, what they see of us is the day-to-day, mundane choices that we make in life.  Non-Christians might not know which hymns we sing on a Sunday morning, but they know what car we drive (and how much we drive it).  They might not know what topic we covered in Sunday school, but they know what food we eat (and how much we eat it).  They might not know our opinions on the fall of man and the salvific work of Christ, but they know how we treat our misbehaving kids in the grocery store and how we deal with a difficult client at work. These little things that we might not even give a second thought to go a long way toward informing non-Christians about who we are and what we believe.

The purpose of this Bible study has been to focus primarily on the environment – what the Bible says about it and how we as believers should think about it.  But it’s important to know also what non-Christians have in mind when they consider environmental issues, because more often than not, no matter why the non-Christian is interested in these issues (whether they think it’s because we’re all connected to some great Mother Earth or because they recognize that environmental issues today have physical repercussions to the future of humanity), there are certain overarching values that environmentalists hold dear and that are intimately linked, in their minds, with living a moral life.

One of these is justice.  In the mind of the environmentalist, pollution is not just a nasty by-product of industrialization, it’s morally wrong. It causes sickness, deformities, even death.  People who are being polluted against their will (such as those whose drinking water has been affected by a nearby factory or children growing up in high traffic areas with higher rates of asthma) are the recipients of injustice.  And those who contribute to that injustice are themselves unjust. So when a non-Christian sees a Christian who doesn’t seem to care about pollution, they believe right away that Christians have no care for justice.  Whether accurate or not, that is the perception.

Another important value environmentalists hold to is love. They tend to get mushy gushy when they talk about it (“We are all connected.”  “We are all children of the Earth Mother.”) but the value itself, love for one another, is admirable. [D] All people hold love to be important. Whether it's family, friends, faith or even the environment, everybody values some thing greatly.[/D] So think of what they see when their Christian neighbors spray pesticides on the peach tree in their own yard and the poisons float down onto the non-Christian’s raspberry bushes. The environmentalist non-Christian is immediately convinced that the Christians don’t even take seriously their own belief that they should “love their neighbor” because they didn’t take into consideration the damage their actions would cause to their neighbor.

So as you read through the following Scripture passages and examples from current news stories, put yourself in the shoes of your non-Christian neighbors.  What values do they see in you as they’re reflected in your day-to-day decisions and activities – especially as they pertain to the environment?  How does your church come across to environmentalists who live in the same neighborhood and see the regular meetings and activities of the church body?

What Social Networking Site Would Jesus Buy?

http://barefootmeg.multiply.com/journal/item/158/What_Social_Networking_Site_Would_Jesus_Buy
There's a rumor going around that the Mormon church made an offer to buy Facebook. I thought I'd run with the idea and have a little fun with it. Click through to read.