Sometimes I think going to church can confuse us about our place in God’s plan. We see the pastor preach and the worship leader sing, and we mistakenly think they are doing the real work of the Kingdom while we just help support them. But this is exactly backwards.
What they do is wonderful, but a big part of their task is to assist and enable the rest of us in what we do. They help the architect be a more Godly architect. They help the mechanic be a more Godly mechanic. The nurse, the maid, the engineer, the lawyer, the landscaper, and so on. Their job is to help the rest of us glorify God more in what we do. Which is why it’s so surprising that laypeople sometimes think that they are second-class citizens in God’s economy because their ministry is in the workplace. How silly!
God can be glorified by a flower or a fish, and a tree or a chipmunk can surely preach the glory of God. Why wouldn’t the same be true of whatever you do for a living?
Thought of the Day 06.30.08
“In the free marketplace of ideas, Christianity will prevail.” I’ve often heard this idea expressed, and it’s frequently been my own voice doing the talking. But I’m not so sure anymore. Not because Christianity won’t prevail, but because I no longer feel comfortable saying Christ is a spiritual product you shop for at Religion-Mart and buy because He’s the most intellectually economical.
See, comparisons imply similarity and proximity, and if Jesus is merely your best choice, as opposed to being your only choice, then you haven’t really understood the choice yet. Consider marriage. It’s one thing to start dating because this girl is better than the others, but unless she becomes the only girl you can imagine, you aren’t ready to marry her. The goal isn’t to find someone you can live with, but to find someone you can’t live without.
And if someone thinks he can live without Christ, then he doesn’t yet really know what it means to live with Him. Saying Jesus is the best way is very different from saying Jesus is the only way.
See, comparisons imply similarity and proximity, and if Jesus is merely your best choice, as opposed to being your only choice, then you haven’t really understood the choice yet. Consider marriage. It’s one thing to start dating because this girl is better than the others, but unless she becomes the only girl you can imagine, you aren’t ready to marry her. The goal isn’t to find someone you can live with, but to find someone you can’t live without.
And if someone thinks he can live without Christ, then he doesn’t yet really know what it means to live with Him. Saying Jesus is the best way is very different from saying Jesus is the only way.
Thought of the Day 06.27.08
“Have it your way right away.” “For all you do, this Bud’s for you.” And my favorite, “You deserve a break today.” Contradicting our parents, ad slogans encourage us to be selfish, and it’s killing our society. At least that’s what I thought until I went to Wikipedia looking for examples to make my case more convincing.
Instead, I found a page with about 800 slogans, the vast majority of which did not cater to selfishness as I expected. Most were cute or even described a product feature or benefit. And it wasn’t until I neared the end of the list, feeling increasingly frustrated at not finding the ammunition I wanted, that I realized my error. I had been so interested in making my point that I had almost failed to notice the evidence.
Oh, I still believe that we’re too selfish a culture and advertising doesn’t help, but I am reminded once again that we must always be open to the possibility that the evidence will invalidate our cherished dogmas, especially the pessimistic ones. If that’s true of ad slogans on a web page, it’s surely even more true of our Bible, which was designed to correct us.
Thought of the Day 06.25.08
One of the most frustrating thing about writing these thoughts every day is the pressure to once again come up with something brilliant to say. And of course my standard for them isn’t merely that they are worth reading or even very good. My scale is calibrated against the best ones I do. Knowing that I’m sometimes capable of a ten causes me to be frustrated when I only score a 5 or 6, even though I rationally know that’s still well above the surrounding culture’s average of 1 or 2.
But there’s a baseball expression that helps me manage my perfectionism. “Good hitters take what the other team gives them.” Pitch selection and defensive alignment may make it impossible to hit a home run or even a double, so a good batter observes this and goes for the single to keep the inning alive. He knows that reaching base is always better than making an out.
So I’ve learned to be content taking the base hits I can get while always anticipating the thrill of the occasional walk-off home run. Good advice for any perfectionist, I think.
But there’s a baseball expression that helps me manage my perfectionism. “Good hitters take what the other team gives them.” Pitch selection and defensive alignment may make it impossible to hit a home run or even a double, so a good batter observes this and goes for the single to keep the inning alive. He knows that reaching base is always better than making an out.
So I’ve learned to be content taking the base hits I can get while always anticipating the thrill of the occasional walk-off home run. Good advice for any perfectionist, I think.
Thought of the Day 06.25.08
We’ve always known that referees make mistakes, but before television, debates about what actually happened on a sports play were essentially unsolvable. Nowadays, of course, we have instant replay, and we regularly discover that the ref got it wrong. But as a philosopher, I want to ask an odd question. Why don’t we ever say that the camera got it wrong?
Sounds silly, right? But it’s essentially an epistemology question. We assume cameras don’t make mistakes whereas human eyes do. In fact, we trust our eyes so little that we don’t even like to be dogmatic until after we’ve seen the replay. Our trust in cameras is not just total, it’s unquestionable. A ref who dared to challenge the camera would be laughed out of the profession, and even the referees have accepted that the role of the camera is to verify or correct their calls.
And whenever I hear people say that true science will always confirm the Bible, I want to caution them lest, in celebrating the times the camera supports the ref, they unwittingly embrace a system which sets up science as the infallible instant replay for the fallible Scriptures.
Sounds silly, right? But it’s essentially an epistemology question. We assume cameras don’t make mistakes whereas human eyes do. In fact, we trust our eyes so little that we don’t even like to be dogmatic until after we’ve seen the replay. Our trust in cameras is not just total, it’s unquestionable. A ref who dared to challenge the camera would be laughed out of the profession, and even the referees have accepted that the role of the camera is to verify or correct their calls.
And whenever I hear people say that true science will always confirm the Bible, I want to caution them lest, in celebrating the times the camera supports the ref, they unwittingly embrace a system which sets up science as the infallible instant replay for the fallible Scriptures.
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