Off to PepperdineI will be out of town this entire week at the Pepperdine in Sunny California. I will be speaking three times with my cohorts John Mark Hicks and we have added Johnny Melton to the mix this year. We will be speaking Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings on "A Gathered People." The substance of our presentation will be drawn from our soon to be released book of that same title.If you are in Malibu stop by and talk with me. I am looking forward to seeing you there.Shalom,Bobby Valent...
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007
The Mission of JesusMany modern Christians have associated “materiality” with “unspiritual.” We hear talk of “spiritual” blessings, “spiritual” needs, saving “souls” and other lingo that seems to imply the secondary nature of God’s material world. This attitude as we have seen in Heaven (2) and Heaven (3) has far more in common with Platonism and Gnosticism than with historic Christianity. I reject a definition of “spiritual” that means “non-material”...
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Once we remove the Platonic shades from our eyes and we investigate the biblical narrative we learn that heaven is part of the story from the get go. Scripture, I believe, is a fully integrated drama or story that is divided into “six acts” or “six chapters.” This story or drama has a plot, a goal or intent. The six acts or chapters are: Act One is Creation; Act Two is humanities Fall; Act Three is God’s relationship with Israel; Act Four is the...
Sunday, April 22, 2007
The resurrection is critically linked to any Christian view of the afterlife. In this particular post I share the view held by the Jewish worldview prior to and contemporary with Jesus and that of the earliest Christian writings following the New Testament. I will highlight how the early Christians attempted to separate their beliefs from the Greeks and Gnostics.The Platonic and Gnostic View"the body is the prison of the soul" (Plato, Phaedo, 65,...
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Heaven: Pie in the Sky or Meek Inheriting the Earth (Part 2)Sometimes the holders of the renewed earth point of view are characterized as having a “carnal mentality.” This view is somehow seen as less than "spiritual" to its critics. A truly spiritual view from that perspective practically necessitates defining "spiritual" as "immaterial." I think the cleavage that has been driven between "material" and "spiritual" does not reflect a biblical mentality. We will come back to this point later.Some of my critics have pointed out to me that the...
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Texts: A Sampling"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen 1.1)"God saw all that he had made, and it was very good" (Gen 1.31)."Cursed is the ground because of you" (Gen 3.17b)"So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden" (Gen 3.23)"Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth" (Isa 65.17)"As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure" (Isa 66.22)"For creation was subjected to frustration, not by its...
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
The Greatest Threat?It sounds a bit presumptuous to identify anyone or anything as the “greatest” of its order. Yet there is a greatest person, a greatest commandment, and a greatest sin. A while back I read a piece that raised the possibility of naming the greatest threat to life, joy, faith, virtue, and all other good things.Elie Wiesel survived the Auschwitz and Buchenwald death camps of Nazi Germany. He speaks and writes extensively concerning the Holocaust. It is his conviction that man’s inhumanity to man during that awful time must not...
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
While We Weep ... For VTHow deserted lies the city, once so full of people!How like a widow she is, who was once great among the nations!...Bitterly she weeps at night, tears are upon her cheeks.Among all her lovers there is none to comfort her;they have become her enemies....Remember, O LORD, what has happened to us;look and see our disgrace.Our inheritance has been turned ...We have become orphans and fatherless,our mothers like widows.We must buy the water we drink;our wood can be had only at a price.Those who pursue us are at our heels;we are...
Friday, April 13, 2007
Faith In a Troubled World, Meditations on Hab 1.1-4 “How long, O LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife and conflict abounds. Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so justice is perverted.”Getting Started...
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
The Taxman: Text and Context #5, Luke 20.20-26One of the sad ironies of April is that tax day follows closely on the heels of Easter. I am not sure if that is on purpose but one never knows with Caesar. After an email today from a dear friend I spent a few moments reflecting upon the question put to Jesus by the "spies": "Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?"Knowledge of the social setting (i.e. context) of Jesus and Jerusalem at...
Monday, April 9, 2007
The "Gospel" of Judas: Reflections and ThoughtsChristians throughout the world celebrated the bodily resurrection of Jesus the Nazarene yesterday (April 8). I have decided as a follow up there could be no better way to highlight the "Easter" message than by contrasting it with Gnosticism that has perpetually plagued the Church. What follows is part of a larger presentation that I did on May 13, 2006 on The "Gospel" of Judas at Southside Church...
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