Is time measurement arbitrary? That is, is the division of trips around the sun into years just something we do?

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. – Genesis 1:14-19

One of the reasons we mark years and days and (more significantly) weeks is because that’s how God set it up. In making the universe the way he did, in placing the stars where they are, in placing the earth where it is, with the atmosphere it has, on the tilted axis it twirls on, God made it so we could mark years and days. The regularity with with they pass is a testament to God’s faithfulness. Consider,

The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: “Thus says the Lord: If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night will not come at their appointed time, then also my covenant with David my servant may be broken, so that he shall not have a son to reign on his throne, and my covenant with the Levitical priests my ministers…” – Jeremiah 33:19-21

The passage of day and night at regular, predictable intervals shows God’s covenant faithfulness to his people and his promises. I think that in the passage above, we are meant to see that faithfulness fulfilled in the coming of Jesus. He is the true Son of David and he is the fulfillment of the Levitical priesthood (Hebrews 8 – 10).

So isn’t it fitting that pretty much globally we are celebrating the beginning of the year 20089 (thank you Sean) Anno Domini, that is The Year of Our Lord?  God made it so that we could mark years and days and be assured of his faithfulness till the “fullness of time” when Jesus was “born of women, born under the law”(Galatians 4:4). And now we number the years since. Amazing.

So why did I say that marking the week is most significant? Because there is no natural marker for a week. Morning and evening, a day. One trip around the sun, a year. Seven days, a week. Why? Because God created the heavens and the earth in six days and rested on the seventh. This pattern was recognized by the Hebrews (Exodus 16) before the law was given (Exodus 20 and following). The Sabbath on the seventh day recognized and solemnified that pattern and, according to Hebrews 4, Jesus fulfilled it in a way and so we rest in him. So even our seven day week is a recognition of God’s promise from the foundation of the world till the coming of Jesus.

I have had a “bad” stomach for about 20 years now. I remember in 1988 after I returned from England how by 10AM my stomach would hurt so bad that I’d have to go buy a carton of milk to get it to settle down. I couldn’t figure out what was causing it. I’d have oatmeal for breakfast and have an upset stomach by 10. I finally went to the hospital and they tested me for ulcers and such. Nothing. So they put me on medication. Don’t you love that? Couldn’t figure out what was wrong so they gave me pills! Anyway, the Zantac helped for a year or two.

Today, no more Zantac and I pretty much have my stomach problems under control. I just watch what and when I eat and I’m okay. So what was it? Wheat. Sure, I had oatmeal for breakfast, but I’d eat it with buttered toast. Took me quite a while to figure it out. But this morning I had peanut butter on buttered toast and a cup of coffee. Can I expect an attack soon? Probably not. What I’ve learned is not to totally eliminate wheat from my diet, but to take a little bit every once in a while.

You see, I’ve found that my body can tolerate some wheat. Apparently, it doesn’t like it and can’t handle large amounts of the stuff, but it can tolerate a moderate amount. That’s what tolerance is. Tolerance isn’t my body just getting over its problem with wheat and accepting it completely as part of my diet. Tolerance in this case is my body not liking it but accepting it in specific ways. That’s what the word means.

So as 2009 begins and President Obama is about to take the oath of office and Rick Warren is going to give the invocation, let’s hope there is tolerance on both sides of the political debate. Some are protesting Warren’s inclusion because of his stance on homosexuality. Some are so concerned that he might utter the name ‘Jesus’ during his prayer that they are filing a law suit to block prayer at the event. Some are concerned that Warren might pray in a bland, generic manner that doesn’t honor Christ; and by the way, Warren is a Christian pastor. I just hope that in the end, we can all stomach a little tolerance for positions we don’t agree with. That’s the kind of thing America has been struggling toward since our beginning.

I got YoYo Ma’s Christmas CD at Starbucks a few weeks ago and it was this song that most gripped me. The music is beautiful, the instrumentation is perfect and I love Allison Krauss’ voice. Her music is often rich with Christian thought. But the words to this carol caught me this morning:

Good people all, this Christmas time,
Consider well and bear in mind
What our good God for us has done,
In sending His beloved Son.
With Mary holy we should pray
To God with love this Christmas Day;
In Bethlehem upon that morn
There was a blest Messiah born.

Near Bethlehem did shepherds keep
Their flocks of lambs and feeding sheep;
To whom God’s angels did appear
Which put the shepherds in great fear.
“Prepare and go”, the angels said,
“To Bethlehem, be not afraid;
For there you’ll find, this happy morn,
A princely Babe, sweet Jesus born.”

With thankful heart and joyful mind,
The shepherds went this babe to find,
And as God’s angel has foretold,
They did our Savior Christ behold.
Within a manger He was laid,
And by His side the virgin maid
Attending on the Lord of Life,
Who came on earth to end all strife.

Merry Christmas. Wonder at the mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God.

This morning I was reflecting on some things that happened to me about 14 years ago and how unfair they were. I didn’t get what I was promised or what I deserved. I’d like to say that I’ve gotten past the sting but obviously if I’m still dwelling on them I have not. This morning I began to put them into the perspective of where I am now and the role those things played in getting me here. Yes, they were wrong, perhaps even sinful, but God allowed them at the right time in the right way to get me here now. I couldn’t have seen that at the time but with those things I probably wouldn’t have finished my under-grad degree nor would I have been involved in my last church at a critical time.

That began to give me confidence that God is in charge and is leading. I was able to serve my last church the way I did not because of my great skill but because of God’s mighty work. He is even able to accomplish his purposes though a goof like me. Then I looked forward. If he has done all that in my history, if he has written my story that way so far, then he probably has a purpose for me going forward as well. So I sat here with coffee cup in hand pondering this. I have little confidence in myself as a leader but I have great confidence in God’s ability to accomplish his purposes even with weak people. So going forward, I don’t have confidence in myself but I do have great confidence in God. How do I operate doubting myself but trusting him? What’s the linchpin that keeps those two things together?

My mind went to Solomon. I don’t know why, I haven’t been reading 1 or 2 Kings but I though of Solomon’s ascension to the throne of David. Listen to what Solomon says to God,

“And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of David my father, although I am but a little child. I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people, too many to be numbered or counted for multitude. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people?” – 1Ki 3:7-9

Solomon knew he wasn’t fit for the task of leading Israel. He didn’t have confidence in himself, but he knew what God had done through David and the promise (covenant) he’s made with his father. And so he asked God for what he didn’t have. He trusted God to give him what he needed to lead. The linchpin between my appropriate mistrust of my abilities and my confidence in God is prayer. “Lord, I can’t… but you can.” I need to pray more.

John Piper has blogged on the book Peace Like A River so a few things are sure to happen:

1. It will sell a bunch quickly.
2. Amazon reviews will greatly multiply.
3. Bloggers will review it to pieces and most will find it wonderful.
4. Someone (or a few someones) will give one away on their blog.

Such is the impact of a celebrity  theologian. :) Before the frenzy begins I just wanted make a few brief observations. Not so much about the book; all I’ve read is the preview available on Amazon. I trust Piper’s judgment on the rest of the book. From the little bit I have read, the author writes characters who live as though God were real. As though he were at work in the world. The God in Peace Like A River is not a deist god who you can talk to to make yourself feel better but can be safely assured that  he/she won’t actually doing anything. God in Peace is an active character. He does stuff. The people seem real, not like plastic dashboard saints.

This is the Christian worldview depicted in fiction that I was looking for in Fireproof. I wonder if Sherwood Pictures should be talking to Leif Enger (the author of Peace Like A River) about movie rights? At a minimum I think the writers at Sherwood should read and digest this book.

Let the blog frenzy begin now.

Trevin Wax is giving away and awesome set of books plus the Golden Fleece of all of 2008’s books, The ESV Study Bible.

Whatever you do, do NOT subscribe to his blog via RSS to be entered once for the drawing. Do NOT link to his blog on your blog to be entered a second time. And, most certainly do NOT create a blog post linking to the drawing for a third entry. Because that’s what I’ve done and I’d really like to win so I don’t want any more competition.

Thank you.

Time’s website has reprinted an article from Christmas time, 1940 about the Church in Germany under Hitler. Oh my goodness, if magazines wrote like this today! Even more important, if the Church had a reputation like this today!I recommend you read it carefully and reflect on it. I’d also recommend meditating on Matthew 5:13-16 in conjunction with reading the Time piece.

The Time piece mentions Martin Niemoller, a Lutheran pastor who stood up to the Nazi’s co-opting of the church in Germany. Deitrich Bonhoffer is the better known German Christian because of his excellent writings and the fact that he died in a concentration camp, but Niemoller was an important force also. He too went to a concentration camp but was liberated before his execution. He helped form the Confessing Church in Germany, a group of Protestant pastors who refused to recognize the Church as an organ of the state. This is what the article is referring to when it mentions “Confessional pastors.” You can find out more about Niemoller and the church under Hitler in Erwin Lutzer’s very good book Hitler’s Cross.

There are, however, a few things to keep in mind when reading the Time article. Early in the piece they report “More than 80% of the prisoners in the concentration camps are not Jews but Christian.” That may or may not be accurate. First, it was reported in 1940, early in the war before America’s involvement. Jews at that time may have been being rounded up in ghettos before the reich began large scale extermination in the camps. Also, information about the concentration camps was tightly guarded by the Nazi’s till the Allies liberated them at the end of the war. This number may be inaccurate because of the nature of the intelligence at that time.

In light of the recent presidential election here and some of the talk about how evangelicals would vote, I found this paragraph most instructive:

As exiled Nobel Prizeman Thomas Mann said last week: “There can be no real peace between the cross and the swastika. National socialism is essentially unchristian and antichristian. . . .” Though the conflict between Christianity and Naziism seems inevitable now, it did not seem so when Hitler came into power. Catholics and Protestants alike helped his coup d’état. Martin Niemoller himself supported him. And one of Hitler’s first acts as Chancellor was to declare: “In the two Christian creeds lie the most important factors for the preservation of the German people.” Only in secret did he tell his confidant Hermann Rauschning: “The parsons will be made to dig their own graves. They will betray their God to us. They will betray anything for the sake of their miserable little jobs and incomes. … I can guarantee that they will replace the cross with our swastika.”

What I hope we learn from this is the danger of hitching Christianity to any political power or agenda. Evangelicalism is not a political party or platform. There are times when we should be critical of any political party. In the face of the horror that Naziism was, it is easy to see the danger and folly. When facing the Republican or Democratic (or Libertarian for that matter) party, the danger might be harder to see.

(HT)

Finished my second 5k this weekend. It was bitter cold, something like 20°. I stayed wrapped up most of the way around the course. I felt my pace was good and steady and I never really hit the hard part where I really need to press and want to quit. I usually get that during the second mile but this time it kind of felt like that to a lesser degree all the way around.  At the end I had a lot of gas left so the last 75 yards or so I sprinted. My overall time was 29:23, a new personal record. Duh, this is the second time I’ve run. But it was a significant improvement for me. Last time was 30:57 so I shaved about a minute and a half off my time. My pace for this race was about 9:30 and that’s more where I want it. Well, heading in the right direction anyway. I’ve been running 4 miles to train for this one. I’ll probably move that up to 4.5 this next week. I’m going to keep running as long as the weather will permit. I’m number 8 for the free gym membership at work so I hope that comes up sometime in the next month or so then I’ll do the treadmill throughout the hard part of winter.

My wife and I saw Fireproof the other evening. Why? Primarily, so we could have a night out, but also because we were both curious. Fireproof, in case you haven’t heard, is a film produced by Sherwood Pictures, a ministry of a Baptist church in Georgia, and was done with a budget of only about $100,000. Last I looked, it had pulled in about $28 million. Not a bad return on investment. It was able to be made on such a meager budget because most of the crew were volunteers. I’d also guess that it was because they had tremendous support from the local community. We stayed for most of the credits and saw who’d provided what. It was pretty impressive how many local businesses contributed to the film.

But was it a good film? That is really the question, not so much whether it was “Christian” enough but was it done well? One review I saw said something like “made for TV schlock” another praised the film. For me it was somewhere in between. Was it Christian? Unmistakably so. The gospel was clearly presented and the lead was converted to Christ. But, as I’ve intimated, that doesn’t make it a good film. Some of the characters could have been cardboard cut outs they were so predictable and two dimensional. Some of the dialogue was cookie-cutter and not things real people would say. But some of the writing was good. Not great, but good. Most of the cinematography was acceptable. Some of the effects (not special effects) were clumsy and some were good and effective. The story, what ultimately makes or breaks a film, was good and at times engaging. At other times it was soppy and thin. Lisa and I thought Kurt Cameron’s acting was excellent. The directing could have been better but Kurt did a very good job with what he was given. The rest of the actors, no so much.

So was it a good movie? It was okay. It shows promise and growth and that is encouraging. It was not a great film or a great story. There were glimmers of strength here and there but they were sporadic. The greatest weakness for me was that it was preachy. While it is encouraging to see Christians engaging predominant cultural mediums of our day instead of shunning it or vanishing in to it, this group is trying to present a unique Christian presence in it. I think that is a positive thing.

But that raises the issue of what makes a film Christian. Does a film have to have the gospel verbally presented in order to be considered “Christian?” In my estimation it does not. It doesn’t hurt but I don’t think it is absolutely necessary. A film could present a Christian worldview and not mention the gospel. Two films come to mind that do just that: Signs and to a lesser degree Master and Commander. Signs presented a Christian worldview (or at least a theistic worldview) not so much because Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) recovered his faith and returned to the ministry, but because it presented a situation that argued that God exists and is involved. Some of the first words uttered in the film are “I think God did it” and they reverberate throughout. At the end, Graham embraces his son and says “It can’t be luck” that he was delivered.  Morgan asks “Did someone save me?” and Graham says someone did, meaning God. This presented providence at work. Master and Commander was a bit more subtle but it did show God at work also. When the crew decides that Mr. Hollom is “the Jonah” and Hollom comes to believe it, he commits suicide. At his memorial Captain Aubrey (Russell Crowe) rejects reading from the Book of Jonah and instead offers a public confession of the crew’s sin and asks for God’s and Hollom’s forgiveness.  A moment later the sails begin to fill with wind after weeks of doldrums and Aubrey says “God be praised.” The wind didn’t come when Hollom jumped overboard, that would have been superstition, it came when the crew confessed and asked the Lord for forgiveness for poorly treating a shipmate. That is a much more Christian event than not.

In this sense, was Fireproof Christian; that is, did it present a Christian worldview? Was God active in Fireproof’s world? That’s the rub here. The lead character, Caleb, is seen praying. He is told how much God cares and what God has done in Caleb’s father’s life. And at one of the most important moments of the film, Caleb prays for deliverance and is delivered. How? Well, I don’t want to give away an important moment in the film, but let me just say that Caleb is delivered more by his training than God’s direct involvement. Again, in Signs, when Morgan is delivered by an inexplicable string of circumstances Graham acknowledges that they weren’t coincidences. Unfortunately, Caleb never does that. God is not so strongly credited with Caleb’s deliverance as he is for Morgan’s in Signs or the HMS Surprise’s in Master and Commander.

An important thing to add here: I am discussing storytelling and film making here, not the idea that God operates like that always and in ever circumstance. Stories are exaggerations and focus on special events. They can be devices to make a point and so tend to focus uncommon events. There is no guarantee that God will always deliver your son or fill your sails with wind based upon your response.

In the end, this lack of God’s activity in Fireproof might be because of how the American church largely perceives God. He’s there but not involved. Since we can’t count on him to turn every situation to match our expectations, perhaps he isn’t involved at all in that way. In Fireproof, God was involved in Caleb’s salvation on as one to be reconciled to. He could have been a proposition not a Person. What makes this missed opportunity sad is that storytelling is an excellent place to demonstrate this very thing. But again, Sherwood Pictures is growing and learning their craft. Perhaps in their future outings they’ll learn a lighter hand and include God’s action in the films.

A propos of nothing, the word ‘jingoism’ popped into my head this morning. I’ve heard it but didn’t know what it meant exactly. So I looked it up. Basically, it means ‘extreme nationalism with an aggressive foreign policy.’ That kind of fits with how I’ve heard it used, but this is one of those words that you just wonder where it came from. It doesn’t sound like its meaning. The etymology is more interesting.

It gets its militaristic meaning because it was the policy of the Jingos. But who are/were they? They were Conservative supporters of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli’s policy in the Near East during the period 1877–78. Ah. So why on earth would you call them Jingos? Well, they got that name from the chorus of a 1878 song sung in pubs and music halls:

We don’t want to fight but by Jingo if we do,
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too,
We’ve fought the Bear before, and while we’re Britons true,
The Russians shall not have Constantinople.

Are we getting there? I think so. But what does “by Jingo” mean? It is a minced oath for “by Jesus.” To me ‘jingo’ doesn’t sound like ‘Jesus’ very much beyond the beginning j. Where does ‘jingo’ come from? It originated around 1660 as a conjurer’s call: “Hey jingo appear! Come forth!” The opposite was “Hey presto hasten away!” Eventually it was taken into general use.

As an aside, the two words “jingo” and “presto” were used by stage magicians. We’re still familiar with the latter. The other stage magician phrase we may remember is “hocus pocus” which probably originated in the Latin Mass, hoc est (enim) corpus (meum), “this is my body”.

Because of their jingoism, they employed a lot of hocus pocus and presto! We have a war!