06/01/2008

Weekly Round-Up: From the Publishing World to the Blogroll to Beyond...

Posted on 6/06/2008 Comments (1)

Another exciting week in the quest to get Parables of a Prodigal Son published. On the weight of Bishop N.T. Wright's endorsement, I sent letters to a dozen or so of the top Christian literary agents in the country to see if they might consider representing me in this endeavor.

Standard response time is about a month.

Standard response time for a manuscript containing a non-celebrity's testimony? Well, you usually don't get one, unless its a form rejection letter. Here's a good explanation as to why that's the case.

Within two days, three highly-regarded agents in the Christian publishing world wrote back requesting a full proposal, and two have since asked for the entire manuscript.

I continue to covet the prayers of the 4-5 of you who read this blog regularly. I think I have some really important choices to make in the weeks ahead.

And again, thank you, good Bishop.

Eugene shares some cool, though gooey, pictures.

I mentioned this in my last post, but this is some of the funniest stuff I've ever seen. Please don't watch this, this or this if your line between humor and blasphemy is blurry.

An amazing piece of soul-searching by the iMonk. Perhaps, unintentionally, Spencer's provided the most cogent and complete possible answer to the question: “What is Emergent?”

I stand in agreement with Trevin Wax that this piece by Tim Keller is must-read material, though I wouldn't take it as the final analysis, but a great starting point.

A moving letter by someone literally grappling with the problem of evil. I could do no better than to recommend this.

Jonathan on the wrath/love issue. Looks a lot like what I was saying here, so naturally I loved it.

Grace and Peace,
Raffi

Complete and Utter Randomness

Posted on 6/04/2008 No Comments
Labels: Randomness

This post is to this blog what the Gnostic gospels are the canonicals: snippets of random thoughts devoid of any overarching storyline.

I'm having that kind of day. Ever had one?

Random thoughts. No structure.

Quiet, but cantankerous.

Can't connect. Don't think I really want to.

Dark. Bright horizon.

Suspicious. Not sure about what.

Something' stirring. Can't put my finger on it.

Hillary's pissing me off. But then again, large-scale politics often does.

I ate something today I had never eaten before. That was pretty cool.

Can't wait for Game 1. Can't reconcile my love of sports with my love of God. Probably 'cause it's irreconcilable.

Gettin' tired of preaching to the choir. Too many amens; not enough riots.

A true disciple of the Lord told me that he thought Jesus' summary of the Law and Prophets (love God, neighbor) was an exercise in systematic theology. It left me speechless. It shouldn't have.

It was a crepe filled with strawberries, chocolate spread, vanilla ice cream, and a slab of cheesecake. Ever had one?

This is some of the funniest stuff I've ever seen. Please don't watch this, this or this if your line between humor and blasphemy is blurry

Jesus said "I am the Resurrection." That's been on my mind a lot lately. Maybe I'll work it out in a post.

But not today.

That would be pointless.

Grace and Peace,
Raffi

The Poverty of Language: God So Loved the World, But We Should Hate It?

Posted on 6/02/2008 Comments (5)
Labels: Propositions, truth

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" [John 3:16].

"...don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God" [James 4:4].

Which one of these Scriptures is true and which is false?

They can't both be true, right? We can't in one breath say that God loved the world, and with the next say that we should not even be friends with the world, because that would make us an enemy of God, who Himself loved it. Can we?

I hope you're hearing the sarcasm here. Of course we can love the world and hate the world. Of course both John 3:16 and James 4:4 are true. It all depends on what sense we're using the term "the earth."

Which brings me to the bigger point.

I'm not an enemy of propositional truth. Of course propositions may be true or false. Even the most hardened postmodernist would have to admit this. The problem is that our language is too limited, our experiences too varied, and our God too magnificent to be reduced to a set of objectively true statements about Him.

And this is true of the words used in the Bible itself!

There are senses, nuances, contexts, which make a word or phrase mean one thing in one place and another in another. Sometimes in the same sentence!

"For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it."

"Life," "save," lose;" all of these words mean one thing in the first half of Jesus' mysterious proclamation, and another in the second half.

Up until a very recent time in human history, people were well aware of the limitations of human language to convey deep, rich, true meanings. These same people recognized the necessity of other modes of communication, often times, as the only way to adequately convey such meanings. The notion of truth has been wrongly marginalized to mean only objective, scientific, propositional truth, with all other truths being of a lesser grade.

We must get back to the realization that the spoken and written word, though remarkably capable of supporting most forms of communication, is usually insufficient to convey all truth.

Which is why God gave us symbols. And metaphors. And parables (ever wonder why Jesus used them as much as He did?). And music. And art. And poetry. And the ability to use all these to communicate...to communicate Truth!

Let's not get overly bogged down with words, even when we're talking about The Word. Let's not be that guy who uses his hammer and philips-head screwdriver to fix everything in the house, leaving a garage full of tools gathering dust, and when he comes to something that requires a pipe wrench, convinces himself that its not broken.

A famous ballerina was once asked after a performance what the dance meant. She responded, “If I could say it in words, I wouldn’t need to dance it.”

Beautifully put, in just the right words.

Grace and Peace,
Raffi