The Great Marriage

Very good blog post about Christian Consumerism over at The Great Marriage

We need to examine whether we have helped to create or maintain a church environment which is trying to attract people like a business by offering them something.

Doctrine

What is doctrine? One one hand (at least from my human "wisdom") it seems to be a great way to keep people from falling into error. If I can just get someone to agree with my doctrine, I can know that they are saved. Doctrine seems to stand against the post-modern wishy-washiness* as a modern fortress, on its best days sounding like Paul saying: Keep to what you learned originaly!

On the other hand, how much can doctrine cover? Can we have True doctrine, or can we just have doctrine that is continually updated and changed with the Spirit? I might be going to Lutheran seminary soon, so I need to figure out how to get my hands on a Book of Concord. Apparently Lutherans confess that this is a true exposition of the Word. I've never even read it.

When Luther did his thing, way back when, he imagined the common man sitting down and reading the bible in his own language, and then, with no other help but the Spirit, coming up with all the same ideas he came up with. That didn't work so well, and so apparently he said latter in life: "Now that we have doctrine, there is no reason to read the word**" (Calvin wrote his Institutes for the same reason.)

If true, this is obviously a problem.

Lutherans of many sorts seem to experience God through the Word. This is a good thing, for God sent us the Word as a communication from himself. As I was growing up, I probably would have said that is the only way God communicates. And when I said it, I meant The Holy Bible to be the word. What Lutherans seem to lack is communication with God through the Spirit. I don't know where they stand on Spiritual gifts doctrinally (need to get that book of Concord,) but I do know that the first time I heard of someone speaking in tongues, I thought "ehh, they are probably just making it up." That is what the modern mind thinks when it comes into contact with non scientifically verifiable phenomena. When hearing about a miraculous healing, I was skeptical. So my upbringing seems to have been that, while God performs miracles (usually meaning financial blessings, or healing in response to prayer (not with any of that crazy "laying on of hands")) he doesn't do crazy stuff.

The big question is this, if we admit that the Holy Spirit is a living force on Earth, and we admit that there are evil spirits (another bad word for modernists, but one I couldn't not-believe after reading the bible for any length of time,) how do we know if we are being motivated by an evil spirit or the Holy Spirit (especially in "crazy" things?)

Some say doctrine, others say ______. I'm not sure, but since I fall into the others, I need to find out***.

*"This is what is right for me, you need to search and find your own truth."

**Or something like that, I heard this from my brother.

***I don't think doctrine is useless, but am just pointing out that it tends to stand against the crazy stuff.
Inspired by This Post

Blogging for fun and Profit

I would like to advance the notion that it is entirely possible to have ads on a page, and not be motivated by the profit generated by those ads.

I only say this because I am applying for Google's Ad service for this blog, but I intentionally skipped the article that Blogger offers on something like "How to optimize your blog for Google's Ads..." And I have been reading various comments on how blogs w/o ads seem to have some kind of 'authority' that other sources with ads do (be they blogs, or network news, &c.)

Unnable to Detect Sarcasm

There used to be a link to an article here, which I thought was interesting at first glance, but after reading the whole thing, I realized that the language at the beginning of the article which I agreed with was actually sarcasm.... stuff like:

"For those of you in the secular humanist camp who hold on to the quaint notion of "separation of church and state'"

and the like. So I give the unnamed site a thumbsdown.

Daily Readings

I used to see the little devotional book Portals of Prayer on the bathroom counter and would slightly think down on the short little reading they would stick at the beginning. I really wanted to read a big chunk of the bible if I read the bible. That tended to result in me not reading the bible daily, but also, now that I am doing a reading I have noticed another side effect. The series I am doing has a Psalm, an Old Testament, and a New Testament reading, and it really gets around the Old Testament. When I began doing these readings, I had trouble finding the minor prophets, and some of the Epistles. Now I am getting more proficient at finding things in the bible.

I recommend finding a series that includes a Psalm, OT and NT reading and giving it a go.

I'm so busy

It is funny, because I have suddenly noticed lots of free time on my hands, but I also have stopped sitting around browsing the web so much. I wonder if these two things are related in any way...