Summer Series: #2 - Social Justice

Deuteronomy 24:19-21
When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the alien, the fatherless and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time. Leave what remains for the alien, the fatherless and the widow. When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. Leave what remains for the alien, the fatherless and the widow.

The opportunities I have had to work with the poor while attending Bible College have raised all sorts of question about social justice. What is the best way to care for the poor? If we feed the less fortunate, are we simply making them reliant on us? Do our caring actions just make the problem worse? If so, what is the best way to show our love to these people? It's interesting to see the different ways that God answered these questions in his Torah. The passage above talks about how the Israelites were told to leave some of their crops in the fields so that the aliens, the fatherless and the widows would have something to eat. Notice, however, that these people still had to work for their food. The Israelites didn't go back and collect what was left over and then give it out. Instead they made those who were in need come and get it for themselves.

Summer Series: Thoughts from the Pentateuch

Last semester I took a class on the Pentateuch. One of our assignments was to write weekly blog posts about our observations from our text book and the Biblical text. Over the next two months or so I'm going to re-post a few of these blog entries here (with a few modifications). I hope you enjoy!

In a recent class we had a discussion about capital punishment. One of the concerns with it is that a person might be wrongly accused of a crime and then killed for it. I'm wondering if Deuteronamy 19:16-19 has something to add to this discussion:

"If a malicious witness takes the stand to accuse a man of a crime,
the two men involved in the dispute must stand in the presence of the
LORD before the priests and the judges who are in office at the time.
The judges must make a thorough investigation, and if the witness
proves to be a liar, giving false testimony against his brother, then do to him as he intended to do to his brother."

So if someone falsely testified that a person was a murderer, they themselves would be subject to capital punishment. It seems a little harsh at first, but I'm sure it would help dissuade people from making a false accusation. I certainly don't think this answers all of the questions regarding this issue, but its something to think about.

Between The Trees

The last time Anberlin came through town, a band called Between the Trees opened for them. I had never heard of them before, but many people I knew were as excited about seeing them as they were about Anberin. I heard a few of their songs on Purevolume and was fairly impressed. I've been meaning to pick up their CD since then but never got around to it. I was on Amazon the other day and noticed that someone was selling it for $0.64! It was a no-brainer. Its in the mail right now. If you're looking to add another great CD to your collection, this is the perfect opportunity.

JesusFreakHideout Review

Buy it for $0.64 at Amazon.com

Faith or Knowledge?

Which is more important: faith or knowledge? Which should be the grounding of what we believe? I would suggest that a solid foundation will include both. So, which should come first? These are questions that Christians have asked for centuries and that will continue to be asked long after we are gone. Today I ran across a little insight into these questions while reading a secular blog about business and entrepreneurship:

One of the key tenets of entrepreneurship is that you start your company with insufficient resources and knowledge.

Faith-based Entrepreneurship
At first, entrepreneurship is a Faith-based initiative. There is no certainty about a startup on day-one. You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. You leave the comfort of your existing job, convince a few partners to join you and you jump off the bridge together.

At each startup I couldn’t wait to do this. No building, no money, no customers, no market? Great, sign me up. We’ll build something from scratch.

You start a company on a vision; on a series of Faith-based hypotheses.

Fact-based Execution
However, successfully executing a startup requires the company to become Fact-based as soon as it can.

Think about all the assumptions you’ve made to get your business off the ground. Who are the customers? What problems do they have? What are their most important problems? How much would they pay to solve them? What’s the best way to tell them about our product?…

Ad infinitum. These customer and market risks need to be translated into facts as soon as possible.

You can blindly continue to execute on faith that your hypothesis are correct. You’ll ship your product and you’ll find out if you were wrong when you run out of money

Or you can quickly get out of the building and test whether your hypothesis were correct and turn them into facts.

In hindsight, when I was young, this where I went wrong. It’s a lot more comfortable to hang on to your own beliefs than to get (or face) the facts. Because at times facts may create cognitive dissonance with the beliefs that got you started and funded.

Customer Development
This strategy of starting on faith, and quickly turning them into facts is the core of the Customer Development process.

Obviously not everything is going to apply straight across to religion or to Christianity, but its food for thought.

Blip.fm

Anyone else ever heard of a site called Blip.fm? You create your own profile and become your own dj. Basically you "blip" a song to let others know that you are listening to it so they can here it as well. I've created a profile so you can check it out at http://blip.fm/religion_music. See what I've been listening to lately. Anyone else here use Blip.fm? Comment on this post and let me know what your username is.

Under the Banner of Heaven

I was just reading one of the papers I wrote last fall for my class on New Religious Movements. For that class I wrote a book review on Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven. If you are ever looking for an exciting way to learn about the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (also known as the Mormons), this book does an excellent job of explaining their story in a captivating way. While I do not agree with the teachings of the Mormon church, I do think it is valuable to understand why other people believe what they do and how they see the world. A book like this provides an excellent lens to do so.

St. Basil on the Holy Spirit

The following is an analytical book review that I wrote for one of my college courses last semester. The book is On the Holy Spirit by St. Basil the Great, which I highly recommend. Not a light read by any stretch, but it contains plenty of good content.

Basil wrote his book On the Holy Spirit in 375 AD, part way between the first two ecumenical councils. Not only did people have questions about the divinity of the Spirit but there were many lingering questions about the nature of the Son as well. Two of his opponents, the Eunomians and pneumatomachians, were subordinationists, giving the Father the greatest honour and placing the Son and Spirit underneath him. Since denying the Spirit's divinity in this way is no small matter, Basil set out to show that the Father, Son and Spirit are all worthy of equal glory.

The book's first major argument concerns Basil's use of the doxology in the form of “Glory to the Father with the son together with the Holy Spirit.” His opponents argued that this was in opposition to the more customary form “Glory to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit” (see introduction page 11 for doxologies). The subordinationists claimed that the words “through” and “in” were evidence that the Son and Spirit were underneath the Father. Basil shows, however, that the basis for their claim was found only in pagan literature (3.5). The scriptures use these same words in relation to the Father as well as to the Son and Spirit (5.10). If “through” and “in” are used to imply that a person is underneath someone else, then who is the Father less than (5.8)? Basil continues his argument by demonstrating from the Psalms that “with” can be used in the place of “in” (25.28). What we discover is that the theology and meaning of both doxologies is actually the same. Although they each serve a different purpose and help us to understand different aspects of the Godhead, they both acknowledge the mystery of the Trinity and the divinity of all three persons. It was the subordinationists who had read false meaning into the words “through” and “in.”

Jesus' command to baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” (Matt 28:19) also plays an important role in Basil's argument. It shows the equality of all three persons and implies that each plays an important role in salvation. It is also important as a defense of Basil's doxology, since the word “and,” which has basically the same meaning as “with,”(25.59) is used to refer to all three persons of the Trinity. Some of Basil's opponents must have taken issue with the fact that Basil placed so much emphasis on this command and so he devotes a large section of his work to refuting their specific arguments.

Basil gives three main reasons, besides the fact that believers are baptized into the Spirit, why he believes that the Spirit is of divine nature. First, he shares many titles with the Father and Son. These titles include Spirit (John 4:24), good, upright (Ps 92:15), and Paraclete (John 14:16; 19.48). Secondly, he does similar works to the other persons of the Trinity. The Spirit works miracles (19.49) and also plays a key part in the remission of sins (1 Cor 6:11) and resurrection from the dead (Ps 104:30). He leads people and speaks with the authority of the Lord (Acts 13:2). Like Christ, he is our intercessor (Rom 8:26). These are all divine acts that only God can accomplish. Lastly, the Spirit, like the Father and Son, cannot be grasped by human thought (22.53; John 14:17). In fact, the only one who knows God's thoughts is the Spirit (16.40; 1 Cor 2:11).

Tradition played a major role as a source of Basil's theology. In fact, he goes so far as to give the Bible and tradition “equal force” (27.66). His doxology had been disputed on the grounds that it had no basis in tradition of the church fathers. Basil reverses this argument by giving numerous examples of how his form of the doxology was used by many significant church leaders before him.

We have explored four of the main threads that run throughout Basil's book which demonstrate that the Spirit is divine. We will now look at the implications of this discovery for our own lives. For Basil it was important that we give praise and honour to the Spirit as a result of his works. Together with the Father and Son, the Spirit is worthy of glory (23.54). To deny him this glory is to fall into heresy. Basil reminds us of the scripture which tells us that “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven” (28.70; Luke 12:10). While we might not be tempted to deny the divinity of the Spirit as the pneumatomachians did, my own experience is that we often remember the Father and Son in our worship and prayers but forget to acknowledge the Spirit. If we are to take Basil's words to heart, we should honour the Spirit to the same extent that we do the Father and Son.