IntenseDebate - ShackBibleGuy

14 years ago @ Captain's Blog - Maybe it’s Time to S... · 0 replies · +1 points

Great post! I've appreciated the work of Leron Shults in this area... He points out the Hebrew way of talking about God's presence in terms of God's "face." http://leronshults.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/01/... "May the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace." Someone can be present with you but facing away, but if they face you, their presence is intensified. We could say the gospel is that in Jesus, God has faced us forever, and the HOly Spirit is now teaching us to face him and each other with the face of Jesus. Makes me think of C.S. Lewis' "Til We Have Faces."

15 years ago @ Captain's Blog - Dear God · 2 replies · +3 points

I've always found it funny that, if someone says "God is not omnipresent," they're a heretic, but if someone says "God please be present," they're a worship leader.

15 years ago @ Captain's Blog - Ugly Duckling or Bad R... · 0 replies · +2 points

The reunion phenomenon is so weird -- the power it has to make my personality revert to Me-minus-20-years. I think it must has to do with how personhood is socially constituted. My identity resides not simply inside my skin, but also in the relational patterns/games by which I relate myself to the people around me. And when I encounter people from 20 years ago, I can't help but call up the 20-year-old playbook, the script by which I've learned to think/feel/act around these people. Choosing to live by a NEW script in such situations sounds easy, but it isn't. Thanks for sharing, Chad. I know how you feel!

15 years ago @ Captain's Blog - Hipster Christianity- ... · 1 reply · +4 points

My Christian Hipster Quotient is 79 / 120. The book sounds great! If "cool" means "easy to swallow by most people," it's useless to the gospel. Coolness can easily be another kind of legalism, a way of determining insiders and outsiders. "If you are offended by this offensive 'unchristian' thing I am doing, then you are not one of us."

Perhaps this year, I will give up coolness for Lent. I will:
- Stop drinking
- Wear "This Blood's For You" T-shirts
- Give unconditional support for everything Israel does
- Vote Republican

15 years ago @ Captain's Blog - Calling Ourselves Chri... · 0 replies · +2 points

I think a lot of the difficulty here arises from the mistaken notion that Jesus started a religion called 'Christianity,' and that it is a club people ought to join. Religions exist because people believe they are separated from God and that they need a method for bridging that gap. Jesus didn't give us yet another method for 'getting back to God.' Rather, in Jesus God was uniting himself with humanity in a way that could never be undone. He declared this truth (often in the Jewish cultural form of "The kingdom of God has arrived"), and told people to believe it because it's true. I get no sense from Jesus that he's interested in starting a new religion.

15 years ago @ Captain's Blog - Why Do We Need An Angr... · 0 replies · +1 points

Okay, so I'm coming to this conversation a couple weeks late, but I wanted to chime in... God's presence in Hell is good news, not bad. It means I have a Father who will never give up on me or abandon me, even if I refuse to believe that he likes me, even if I hate him, even if I continue in this wrong-headedness forever. Eternal life, Jesus says, is knowing God. The opposite of eternal life is not-knowing the One who has loved and embraced me forever as his beloved child.

As a side-note, most of the Church Fathers believed the purpose of Hell is remedial and medicinal, not punitive. Hell is the Father, Son and Spirit's way of letting us not love him; it is God's way of giving us space, in the hope of ultimate reconciliation.

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