The Man Behind The Curtain
forty-seveneight year old man with a wife (Rodie), three teenage daughters (Jessica, Rebecca and Sarah – all of them have hair of gold…like their mother), five four three dogs (Browser, Montana, Molly, Paeter and Little Dog … sadly, Molly and Little Dog/Bridget Ellie Mae are no longer with us), three two four cats (Miss Priss, Milo, Mickey and Calvin), twelve acres.
georgia tech graduate in 1983 (electrical engineering, but don’t ask me to do more than replace a light bulb – I’m a software guy, and that’s hardware…); western (phoenix) seminary graduate in 1994 (“master” of divinity – you know, that white candy that’s a southern favorite – and by the size of my gut i think i should be awarded a doctorate any day now…).
also, surprisingly, holder of a mensa-level IQ – i’m serious, yeah, it was hard for me to believe, too – go figure.
frustrated rockstar-wannabee, jethro jull fanatic, bob dylan student, grand funk railroad and KISS for the moments I want to just play rock and roll. drummer, guitarist, bassist, mandolin player, keyboard chord-plunker, and a fairly decent songwriter. more a professional than an amateur theologian, I suppose, simply because of the many hours and lost brain cells I’ve contributed to the pursuit of God, comfortable now with my faith and determined not to let literalists impugn His character simply to make their misguided bibliolatry-based houses-of-cards remain erect.
and did i mention that i love run-on sentences?…
trying hard to remain civil in arguments around george bush’s internets. my refusal to suffer fools gladly occasionally makes me step on the wrong toes, so I get banned from various websites who find it easier to do that than deal with me or what I’m saying (“truth? you can’t handle the truth!”). of course, banning me and deleting my comments winds up saying more about them than it does about me, doesn’t it?
for an interesting exercise, read all the posts on this site and try to identify which ones were written during a manic cycle and which ones come from the depressive side. for extra points, identify also whether or not you think i wrote the post when i was current on my shrink-suggested meds. place each post in the proper quadrant of a weird, psycho jahari window of sorts. mail in your answers by midnight friday; a drawing will be held from all the correct entries. the winner will receive a straightjacket autographed by this blog author (assuming i can get my arm free to sign it…).
good sense of humor and, yes, i can laugh at myself, and often do. if you pass me while i’m driving a car, i usually look like i’m talking to myself – which i often am, either that or singing and drumming on the steering wheel to whatever CD is playing. so pay attention to your driving – after all, one of us needs to be watching the road…
oops, I just left a long reply telling you how much I loved your site and Dylan and NT Wright (and the shack and Jethro Tull, etc.), and How I’m always finding myself on the wrong end of Challies and Company. But then, after all that, I lost it. I hit the wrong button and now I’m out of time. Anyway, keep up the good work. I very much appreciate your humor, grace, and perspective on life and faith. I’ll try again soon I hope.
joseph –
thanks for your comment.
i went to your site and read the piece you wrote about dylan – that was excellent. i listen to “oh mercy” a lot right now – mainly because my ipod xmitter is in my wife’s car, and “oh mercy” is the only tape in mine. anyway, i guess i overlooked this album when it first came out – i think there are a couple of duds on the 2nd side, but otherwise the songs are absolutely great. i too have always liked “ring them bells” – the chords in the bridge are just masterful in my opinion.
“street legal” has become my favorite dylan album over the years. and it may just be that i wore out copies of other albums to the point where i don’t listen to them as much. the second side is top notch, culminating in “where are you tonight?” which is a great lyric that dylan knocks out of the park vocally.
thanks again for your comments. i appreciate them.
mr
Hi Mike,
Thanks for visiting my “Marin County Jesus” blog–thought I’d return the favor. It’s good to see there’s another 40-something engineer/seminary grad/father of teen girls out there. Keep posting–I’ll be back!
Mike:
I read your comments from a post on Out of Ur dated back on the 24 of April regarding Tim Keller’s article on the Gospel. I made a reply to your comments but wasn’t sure if you would notice them since the post is a few weeks old now, yet I was hoping to dialogue on this a bit with you.
My reply was:
Are you confusing “the Gospel” with “scripture”? The Gospel is clearly spelled out in 1 Corinthians 15 (as Mike mentioned…though you seemed cautious about it): Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, He was buried, and He was raised on the third day, according to the scriptures. This is the Gospel. The Gospel is not Jesus (though He is Good News), nor is the Gospel the bible (Paul clearly differentiates; look at “according to the scriptures”).
I find that clearly understanding what the Gospel is makes sharing it a lot more simple and straightforward. I agree that you could say that “all that is contained in the word of God is the Word of God” but the Gospel (Christ died for our sins, He was buried, He was raised) is not a reduction of scripture or a set of propositions or proof texts. The Gospel is the good news that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and was raised…all according to the scriptures.
Could you clarify your position for me and respond to my questions?
Grace and Peace,
Jamie Page
http://www.bfootblog.com
jamie -
thanks for your comment; sorry if i missed your thoughts posted elsewhere.
that’s an interesting take on it – i’ll have to think about it some more. my initial reaction is that the simple message of 1 Cor 15 is kind of meaningless without proper context, isn’t it? i mean, we can’t just “share the gospel” without giving our hearers some kind of perspective in which to understand it. and i think that’s more true today than ever. certainly in his day Paul went into synagogues to preach the “gospel” message, but the people there had a broad-based understanding within which to hear his message.
and, i’ll confess, the “dying for our sins” piece is the hardest part of the message for me. i think we see the Cross and the work of “atonement” through very narrow blinders that we’ve long since taken to be the only valid view after 2,000 years of evangelism. “dying for our sins” can mean so many different things – not that Paul had them all in mind, of course, because i’d say his position in his “gospel” was that of paying a sin debt on a celestial checking account that was constantly hitting us up for NSF charges…
interesting take. i’d like to hear more about your understanding of how that “gospel” can be shared divorced from the context.
mr
Mike, thanks for the interchange…
I don’t think the view of the Gospel that I’ve portrayed in my earlier comments is divorced from the context of this first letter to the church at Corinth. Nor is it divorced from the second letter, nor is it divorced from all of scripture. (See “according to the scriptures in 1 Cor. 15.3-4).
Surely 1 Corinthians 15 is Paul’s reminder to the church of the resurrection of Jesus (His many appearances to the apostles and other followers) in a reaction to some of them not believing in the resurrection of the dead (1 Cor 15.13).
And here is were my articulation of the Gospel as laid out above is proven in this passage…Paul goes on to discuss if there is no resurrection from the dead then Christ has not even been raised…our preaching is in vain…we are still in our sins. It is clear to me that the Gospel, as repeated in 1 Cor 15.3-4 is the exact context of this passage, and the reiteration that our sins have been forgiven and we are now made “alive in Christ” (1 Cor. 15.22) which is what the Gospel is (died for our sins according to the scriptures, was buried, was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures).
I’m curious now, how you divorce the concept of atonement from this passage (in it’s context, as I’ve just laid out that it’s all about atonement – no longer are we in our sins…we are made alive in Christ) and other passages throughout scripture that clearly demonstrate the propitiation and expiation of our sins.
Thanks for the dialogue – “as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” is a biblical principle that I certainly believe in and certainly enjoy.
By the way…do you mind if I add a specific post to my blog that carries our discussion as I think it would be good for the readers of my blog too?
do you mind if I add a specific post to my blog that carries our discussion as I think it would be good for the readers of my blog too?
not at all. but add this as my next entry in it:
as i’ve mentioned elsewhere on my blog, every personality test i’ve ever taken stumbles upon this conclusion about me: resists authority figures. for a long time, i thought that was ludicrous; however, i kind of see that playing out in my theological thinking more and more.
here’s a little different take on things, not that others perhaps haven’t thought this before (and likely were excommunicated or burned at the stake for speaking such heresy):
a) Jesus died for our sins because He came to show us how to live, and that one could live according to the principles of the law. we killed Him. ergo, He died as the result of taking it upon Himself to provide the example we needed, not because of some kind of credit/debit that we owed.
b) everything in the OT was simoly God foreshadowing what was going to happen when He came to provide the guide for our lives. it was knowing the end of the story and writing the plot to lead up to it, not the other way around.
c) we are only separated from God because we choose to be, and like the prodigal returning home, we can come back into relationship with Him whenever we decide to.
d) the law was the “baby formula” for us. if you want rules to live by, said God, fine – here they are. let me know how it works out for you.
e) grace is much harder to live under, because it forces us to balance forgiveness with our tendency to print licenses to steal. God knows this. Paul saw this. the other end of the extreme was the law – mandatory sentencing for every crime committed. our challenge is to live to the right of the license to steal and to the left of the ball and chain of legalism.
f) hell – ‘gehenna’ – is not the fiery, eternal destination of those God wants to punish. rather, it’s the vivid reality of where turning from God took Israel, all the way to sacrificing children in the burning trash heap outside of Jerusalem.
g) life on earth is lived within an endless array of paradoxes. we give our possessions away in order to enjoy abundance. we die to ourselves in order to fully live. we have free will but somehow God is responsible for the outcome. the only obvious points of error in all these dichotomies lie at the extremes, which is where we always have the tendency to reside.
that’s the view i’ve come to, Jamie.
mr
Hi Mike:
Great site you have here…will be back to look around some more as it is quite late now. I appreciate your comments ref. Evangelical Manifesto, but they got lost in the wash with my article. Hey, go figure. See ya later…
Toni from http://FilesFromToni.blogspot.com
Hi Mike:
Thanks for stopping by.
I was able to retrieve my post; (and I haven’t the slightest idea of how it got lost in the shuffle) and posted your comments to it.
“Another thought that I neglected to mention was why in the world do these evangelical Christians even think we need a Manifesto when we already have the written Word, the Bible? That’s enough for me.”
Toni
Toni
toni -
thanks for the comments. i’ve had wordpress lose some stuff occasionally and then it “magically” reappears. but, hey – that’s why they call it software…
to answer your question, about “…need[ing] a Manifesto when we already have the written Word, the Bible” – history has shown us that, if nothing else, the doctrines, opinions and positions which can be drawn from scripture are many and diverse. i think we even err when we start off a discussion by saying, “well, certainly we can agree that there is one correct answer / position / understanding,” because i simply don’t think there is. this doesn’t mean someone can make scripture mean whatever they want – though everyone of us does – but any position we stand on must be stood upon lightly and with humility, and we must always remaining teachable and willing to be shown where we might – perish the thought – be in error (gasp!).
that said, when one group defines a set of positions that it claims are the single, God-blessed positions; that any other position is just a lie from hell; and that this set of positions needs to be the law of the land in a Christian America – well, that’s when people stand up and say, “Hey – you know what we need? An Evangelical Manifesto.”
the bible is, as you say, likely “enough” for everybody. but what you’re really saying is that your understanding of the bible is “enough” for everybody.
and, i hate to be the one to tell you this, sister, but it falls a little short – just like everyone else’s…
mr
Hi Mike:
How about that… You caught me on my computer.
O, I get it now. You’re one of those pragmatic, there are no absolutes, it’s all relevent sorta guy. I hate to tell ya, but you are wrong. The answers to your questions are there but you’ve just looked in the wrong places. See ya.
Toni
actually, i continue to find absolutes almost every day.
i found two, actually, in your recent comment:
1) people will usually jump to conclusions before attempting to discover all the facts; and,
2) either of us having the right answers to the questions does not have to logically follow from whether or not those answers exist….
mr