Seven links about a guy who was either dangerous, bad, or just a little off the wall.  You don’t have to read them all, but don’t stop till you get enough.

1. MJ’s life:  An expression of uncontained misery.  Probably the best thing I’ve read about MJ.  Via BoingBoing and Making Light.
2. The Wounded Soul of Michael.  An insightful overview of MJ’s spiritual side by Terry Mattingly at Get Religion via The Writing on the Wall (below).
3. MJ – Were You Not Entertained?  A long and winding (but satisfying) look at Michael’s spiritual condition at The Writing on the Wall.
4. MJ and Eternity. A simple, direct reminder of our priorities from Why God?
5. Google thought MJ traffic was an attack.  This one shows that our access to info is somewhat precarious when something big happens.  Next time, it could be something important.
6. Filipino prisoners return with MJ dance tribute.  These guys made YouTube history with their, ahem, breakout hit last year.  This CNN story says they’re at it again.
7. Billie Tweets. Nothing more than a moment’s diversion…but fun.

Lord Over Blindness

John 9

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My cousin spoke for a lot of people when she complained on Facebook that the world is ignoring the big issues of the day in favor of wall-to-wall Michael Jackson coverage.  She’s right, of course.  While Iran simmered and Congress passed an enormous (and enormously costly) clean energy bill, all anyone could talk about was Michael and his last hours.  Even now, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN and Fox News all have Michael Jackson prominently featured on their web sites.

Well I’m here to say that Michael’s death does matter.

Not that it should matter, nor that it should matter as much as it does, nor that it should still be leading the news.  Simply that it does matter.

Why does it matter?

Not because Jackson was a great talent (though he was).  Not because he was contributing so much to the world (he wasn’t).  Certainly not because we need the freakish drama he provided for the past twenty years (we don’t).

Michael Jackson matters because, for those of us of a certain age, he was the 80s.  During my college years, there was no one bigger.  Thriller was the background music of 1983 and maybe ‘84 too, and it influenced so much of the music from the rest of the decade.  There are so few things we all pay attention to anymore, but we all knew about Michael, and his death is the occasion for a sort of national family reunion.

Michael Jackson is at the top of the charts again.  At Amazon and iTunes, his tracks dominate the bestseller lists, indicating that this is a brief window where we can admit that we still like his songs.  So give us our chance to reminisce.

As for me, I’ve bought three of his songs.  So far.  After all, I can’t play my old Thriller cassette anymore.

If our relationship with God is really a relationship, shouldn’t we expect to hear from God about the ordinary details of our lives?  John Eldredge delivers an emphatic “yes” in his 2008 book Walking with God, subtitled “Talk to Him.  Hear from Him.  Really”. 

I have to admit that I began reading this book with some skepticism. Although I have thoroughly enjoyed Eldredge’s previous work (Wild at Heart, Waking the Dead), I had heard Eldredge interviewed about Walking with God, and he knocked me off balance when he said that God saved him a long drive by telling him that his wife had remembered to close a pasture gate.  It turns out that this is exactly the kind of guidance Eldredge writes about in Walking with God – God leading us in the ordinary decisions of life.  The bulk of Walking with God is Eldredge’s year-long journal of his day-to-day experiences in seeking God’s guidance. 

He begins, however, with a chapter laying out the Scriptural case for individual guidance.  If I hadn’t just been reading Garry Friesen’s excellent Decision Making and the Will of God, I might have been more positive about Eldredge’s exegesis.  As it is, I have to say (Friesen-like) that Eldredge takes passages about God’s moral will for all people and makes a huge leap in applying them to the everyday decisions of life (like when to go cut a Christmas tree – pp. 3-5).  John 10:1-27, for example, is one of Eldredge’s key Scriptures.  This is the passage where Jesus talks about His sheep recognizing his voice and following him.  But John 10 isn’t about Jesus telling us where to ride a horse (pp. 79-82).  It’s about believers recognizing Jesus as the true teacher in the midst of thieves and robbers (i.e., the Pharisees).  In other words, it’s about our need to recognize God’s truth in a world of competing lies, rather than the more narrowly-focused individual guidance from Jesus that Eldredge seeks. 

Walking then moves to Eldredge’s journal, his experiences of walking with God.  This is the book’s most valuable and most confounding part.  It’s valuable as one believer’s testimony (“This is my experience of God.  Make of it what you will”.)  It’s confounding because, as one believer’s testimony, it’s entirely subjective.  We have to rely on Eldredge to select the details and interpret their meaning for us, and in the end, the most we can say is “Here is how God seems to be leading John Eldredge.”

And how IS God leading him?  By giving him the very subjective experience of sensing God’s leading.  Eldredge writes:

Now, if I don’t seem to hear God’s voice in that moment, sometimes what I will do is “try on” one answer and then the other.  Still in a posture of quiet surrender, I ask the Lord, Is it yes, you want us to go?  Pause.  In my heart I am trying it on, letting it be as though this is God’s answer.  We should go?  Pause and listen.  Or is it no, you want us to stay home?  Pause and let this be his answer.  We should stay home?  Pause and listen again (p. 32).

It’s not exactly a blinding light on the Damascus road, but Eldredge anticipates this reaction by saying that, as with all worthwhile things, we have to learn to hear God’s voice (p. 17) like you learn to play music or snowboard.  But with music or snowboarding, we have an objective standard of competence and people who can see or hear whether or not we’re succeeding.  This inner conversation with God is invisible to others, and entirely subject to the evaluation of the individual.  Perhaps this is why much of the seeking for God’s will in Scripture is done in community (see Acts 15:1-29 for an example). 

There’s a lot to like about Eldredge and Walking with God.  He has a healthy respect for Scripture in that he doesn’t think there’s any need to ask God if you can disobey it.  And he teaches that God is in the business of transforming us, restoring us to the glory he had in mind for us before sin.  So Eldredge isn’t asking God for a look at tomorrow’s stock page, but rather for guidance along the path of godly life.  More than any of this, the testimony of Scripture from beginning to end is that God does desire to know us, to draw us to Himself and be involved in our lives in a fundamental way.

Nevertheless, the problems with this book are many.  There is the huge leap (mentioned above) between the Scriptural examples and the specific practice Eldredge teaches.  And there is a profound difference (as I see it) in the leading described in the Bible and the “trying on” of God’s will Eldredge talks about.  So for guidance in finding out where God is leading, Garry Friesen’s book is a much better place to turn.

—–

Let it be said that my thoughts about this book are in no way colored by my jealousy over Eldredge’s privileged life in an outdoorsman’s paradise, filled with elk, mountains, salmon-fishing and days-long hikes!

Lord Over Creation

John 6:1-24

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Last night as I stood in line at the convenience store, I heard the clerk say to the person in front of me: “Oh, you’re buying Fat Tire (beer). Have you tried it?”

Customer: “Once. Do you like it?”

The clerk responded like a wine steward at a fine restaurant: “It’s a good sippin’ beer. It isn’t a good gettin’ drunk beer. “.

I fully expected the customer to say: “Could you direct me to your finest gettin’ drunk beer?”

Hate me if you must, but I like to see someone putting themselves fully into their work!

1. I’m enamored with the work of Cory Doctorow, a leading thinker and activist on free speech, copyright, and the ownership of ideas in this digital age…and a good sci-fi writer too.  Doctorow is known for giving his books away for free and thereby selling a bunch of them too.  Download some of his sci-fi short stories to get started.
2. Family photo posted on web ends up on a sign in Prague.  Interesting take on privacy, from NPR.
3. News and articles on Christianity from Alltop.  Alltop is powerful no matter what you’re interested in.  The concept is simple – provide links and summaries of stories at top sites.  Sort them by interest.  The Christianity section is incredibly broad.
4. Bing.com.  I’m going to try this new search engine from Microsoft for a week.  I like it so far. 
5. What do you feel you can’t say in church?  Anne Jackson at Flowerdust.net asked that question a year ago.  Scroll through the comments on her post for some truthful responses.
6. The TED Commandments – rules for better speechifying.  Carlos Whittaker applies the rules for speakers at the TED conference to preachers.  Needed that.
7. Speaking of TED, it’s an annual conference on Technonogy, Entertainment and Design where a wide variety of interesting people get eighteen minutes to dazzle with brilliance.  And they often do.

Lord Over the Law

John 5:1-18

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1. Cars of the Communist era.  With the government running GM, these awful designs may soon be seen around town.
2. How did I never find this awesome photography site before?
3. Health insurers invest billions in tobacco stocks.  So they win in any case.  And we lose.
4. I used Prezi this Sunday instead of PowerPoint, and got mostly good reviews (and some motion sickness).  Maybe it could spice up your next presentation.
5. I also used Wordle to make the bulletin front.  It contains all the significant words from John 4:43-54.
6. The blending of Christianity and patriotism is particularly troubling to me.  That’s why I found Greg Boyd’s review of the forthcoming Patriot’s Bible so enlightening.  Part 1.  Part 2.  Publisher’s response.
7. Paul Finley played an awesome guitar concert here at MHCC last night. Check him out on YouTube or Pandora and invite him to your church.

Lord Over Sickness

John 4:43-54

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