How Do You Sell This One on Ebay?

According to this story, a man claims that sometimes an image of Jesus appears on his truck. You can see the photo here (it is copyrighted, so I cannot post it on this blog), and notice that it looks pretty authentic.
According to the article, this occurs when the driver side window has condensation every morning. I'm confused--I thought it was supposed to be when the dew was on the roses. I wonder how he can make a buck off this on Ebay like the people who sell their toast slices which have Jesus' image cooked in.

Lw&Gspl?

At our staff meeting today, one of the topics brought up was the issue of people texting during worship. No, the pastor is not one of those who encourage congregation members to text questions during the sermon.
I will admit, I don't text message much. Granted, this is because it costs extra on my phone. I did text during a conference--shortly after the "worship" service--only to make a snarky comment, which I'll admit was probably remiss of me.
What, however, drives people to text during church? Is it the inability to abandon one's technology for an hour? Maybe it's a very important aspect of one's job that one must immediately respond to. Maybe it's a highly important conversation about the worship service.
I think I understand. It's a diversion for when the pastor preaches too long and never actually gets around to Jesus' death and resurrection. [I am not pointing fingers here, just making a general observation that some pastors will never pass the Issues, Etc. sermon diagnostic.]
Perhaps it is a substitution for thumbing through the hymnal. Send the pastor a text message instead which reads, "More Jesus, please, and less psychobabble." That might exceed text message length. Maybe it could be shortened to txt spk: PDBL&G. Proper between Law & Gospel.
Maybe we should just go with the same option for texters as for sermon snoozers. Do a David reenactment with a slingshot and some stones.

How Great?

The opening ponderance on God (sometimes it’s called worship, sometimes devotion) is fairly typical at most Lutheran teacher gatherings. Sometimes the style is “blended”, but more often than not it is “contemporary”. Today I was somewhat surprised, as it was “blended” as opposed to the out-and-out contemporary I expected. It was a pastor and a man with a guitar. We first sang a hymn, next we sang a praise song.
After being taught the song, which was singable enough (most praise songs tend to be singable if the leader sings it properly—just don’t try to actually count out the rhythm unless you are really good at counting sixteenth notes and dotted quarter rests), but the words left me with one question: Why?
The refrain was as follows:
How great is our God!
Sing with me how great is our God
And all will see how great
How great is our God.
The text of the song did have some nice, poetic imagery which somewhat echoed the imagery of the Psalms. The last verse, surprisingly, referenced the Father, Spirit, and Son (in that order to get the rhyme scheme correct). What was never there was an explanation.
Nobody ever explained to me during middle school that when one makes an argument, one has to have support. This was a challenge in further writing classes when I made a claim and the teacher would write on my essay, Why? It also became an issue during high school geometry while trying to write proofs. I knew the answer; I just couldn’t explain why. Let’s not even mention the high school philosophy final consisting of that one question: Why?
These days I try to teach my students to give support—solid, strong supports based on facts. So why on earth can praise song writers not be expected to do the same?
If our God is so great and we want to sing so that all can see how great our God is, shouldn’t the song mention more than just a description of God as Father, Spirit, and Son? Even the Psalmists gave reasons for God being great: “It is he that made us, not we ourselves” (Ps 100); “God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble” (Ps 43). Psalm 23 gives specific examples of how the Lord is our Shepherd.
Studies of self-esteem building show that children who are constantly bombarded with general praise will either have a false, inflated sense of self; or they will stop believing adults when they praise the children. Most authorities encourage specific praise. You did a great job when. . .
So why should songs explaining how great God is be exempt? No, God won’t get an inflated ego or become disillusioned with praise; it’s just that historically Lutheran singing has been used didactically (if that’s even a word).
If you want to tell someone how great God is, be specific. He created the universe by speaking. That’s great! He led the Israelites out of Egypt with signs and wonders. That’s great! He fulfilled the Law and Prophets and still died in our place for our punishment. That’s great (even if it seems weird to the uninitiated)! He gives us His Word and sacraments. That’s great!
If the point one is trying to make is completely missed, then I ask: What’s the point?

Students, Disciples, and Sheep

I disagreed with the spelling book the other day as it wanted discipline as a synonym for punishment. Too often discipline is perceived as nothing more that that. As the vicar pointed out at our faculty Bible study, discipline is based on disciple, which means student; therefore, I think it not a stretch to reason that to have discipline is akin to studiousness
We had listed qualities we teachers most desired in students, and the first one listed was “listens”, closely followed by “follows directions”. Comparing those two most-desired qualities to disciples of Christ was an interesting exercise indeed.
Jesus says in John chapter 10 that the sheep hear the shepherd’s voice and follow him because they know their shepherd’s voice.
How often do students listen? How often do they follow directions? Being a teacher, I know that it’s less than one wants to admit. Too often a student’s listening gets drowned out by clutter—thoughts of what’s for lunch, thoughts of what am I doing here at school, daydreaming, noise and clamor coming from those around a student, whispering from a neighboring desk pulling attention away from the teacher—all of these can keep a student from listening. Following directions, then, is nearly impossible because one has not heard or attended to listening.
So it is in the life of the sheep. The disciple, the follower of Christ, hears the master’s voice, but does not always listen. We, like sheep, have gone astray. Too much clutter—what’s for lunch, what am I doing here in life, daydreaming, noise and clamor from all sides, the whispering pull of seductive idols of all sorts—keep us from listening to Christ. We do not follow the Law, therefore, because we have not heard or attended. The history of God’s people shows this over and over and over again. Adam and Eve were seduced by the sleek serpentine words; the Israelites were won over with a disheartening report of the size of the people of the land and their walls; Kings of Israel and Judah turned from truth to following Asherah and Baals; Pharisees made up their own laws to follow ritualistically instead of God’s Law.
For all this we cry, “Lord, have mercy!” We turn to Christ, our Shepherd, who became the sheep led to slaughter for us. He is the one who listened and followed the Law of His Father, so that his sheep might be spared and be His disciples—studious ones discipling others.

Signs, Signs

And you thought this was going to be about the tornado. . .

Nope, they've done it again. There is a new billboard campaign. From the news story:

"[Pastor] Benke said it's important people understand what's contained in
Christian scripture.
'And then, quite frankly, the church gets that message
wrong, as well,' he said. 'But the Bible teaches there is no sin that isn't
forgivable in Jesus.'
Benke hopes his church's thought-provoking billboards
mark the beginning, not the end, of a conversation about forgiveness."

The billboards offer a website, http://www.whatsforgivable.com/, and the billboard connects to a sermon series starting soon.

At least this time around, the message is scriptural. In Christ, all sins have been paid for.

Here comes the question: will Jefferson Hills get the message right? Will they talk about all having sinned and fallen short of the glory of God? Will they talk about how we are all beggars before God whose only prayer can be, "Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner"? Will they address confession and repentence? Will they address the unforgivable sin and adequately discuss it?

I suspect that as good as this sermon series sounds, the point will be lost in the midst of people pondering the billboards and wondering in human terms what is forgivable, and miss the point that we are not the king who forgives the large debt, but we are the slave who finds it difficult to forgive the small debt.

More from the File of Things That Make You Go "Hmm"

What does it say when a parent touring one's school (Lutheran school, mind you) if the school holds to its own teaching or has been sucked in to the ways of the world? This actually occured today. The parent wasn't being mean; this person really wanted to know. The parent then proceeded to offer this explanation for the question. This parent has been looking at Christian schools in which to enroll a child, and one school indicated that they did not celebrate Christmas. This school had been directed by its board to celebrate "winter holidays" aka "ChanuRamaKwanzsMas" so as not to offend the sensitivities of its non-Christian students. Excuse me? I can understand a public school (our motto: thou shalt not offend any but those who need offense--Christians, those of European heritage, and those who support a male-dominated culture) not celebrating Christmas, or at least that holiday of Santa Claus, brown paper packages tied up with string, and the Grinch; but a Christian school?! This seems rather ridiculous. The parent even asked the school what they do for Easter. What next? They won't celebrate Mother's Day so as not to offend those without mothers or those with a mother and a stepmother and a surrogate mother and the girlfriend of the mother because the poor teacher doesn't have time enough in the day for four Mother's Day handprints in clay, let alone one because the teacher has to cover hygiene and safe sex and self-esteem and integrating counting in the early English language (een, tween, treen) to help the children become "the most limited of all specialists, the 'well-rounded' [person]"?
Maybe I've crossed the line over into the absurd. Maybe I'm not the one who has crossed the line. I just can't get beyond this question: if you don't stand for what you believe in, why bother believing at all?

From the File of Things That Make You Go, "Hmm"

Perusing a blog I frequent frequently (Is that redundant?), some of the comments there made me wonder. Why is it that in a world, land, society, fill-in-the-blank where "everyone is entitled to their own opinion" and were nobody is supposed to step on the rights of others, those who assert their opinion contrary to popular opinion are squelched? I guess that's a convoluted way to ask.
What about Sarah Palin? Why is she branded whatever she is because of who she is? Why can anybody get away with it with her and not with, say Sotomayor? To pick on one woman is acceptable, to do the same to another is racist. Same goes for the president. Why is it forbidden to ask the hard questions and not be labeled as racist, narrow-minded, or just "totally out of touch with reality"? Policy is considered separately from the person. If Bush had the policies of Clinton, I would never had voted for him, truly. Have we really come so far that we have forgotten how to think and debate civilly? We resort to ad hominim attacks and that wins the debate in our book?
It especially falls hard on Christians, especially those who still hold to theology, doctrine, and vocation. Now we try to rule the world with religion. We are closed-minded to new ways of doing things. If I recall my history correctly, the Christians were opposed to slavery. The Christians helped make Europe a kinder, gentler society in the Middle Ages.
I hear it now: "But that history was written slanted," or "What about the Christians who owned slaves?" or "What about the Crusades, huh?" There is no quick rebuttal if one does not believe in sin. Christians aren't perfect ("Boy, haven't I heard that one before?"), but to say that all Christians are a certain way because of the Crusades is as prejudiced as saying all green people are the same because of the actions of the Wicked Witch of the West. (I'm sure there are green people out there who are truly decent people and do not cackle menacingly and threaten little dogs and girls wearing ruby slippers.)
This is the long way of saying this: I'm not all those labels one slaps on Christian conservatives. Sure, I'll think for myself and make up my own mind. I'll speak up when I need to, and I will work to show others their errors. Maybe that's what's forbidden--"have your own opinion, but I don't want to hear it because you'll just tell me I'm wrong." Or maybe it's okay to tell me I'm wrong to tell you you're wrong because that's just wrong. Welcome to post-modernism, I guess.