Flawed Thoughts (Part 1?)

 One of my earliest blog posts was on The Third Choice in a Two Sided Argument that is something I have pondered for quite some time. I have continued to ponder it since that post and perhaps refine it a bit as well. The question I posed is "Why do people insist that Creationism and Evolution are mutually exclusive theories?" Now, I use God when I could use Supreme Being, but I'm not sugar-coating anything. My belief is in God, not just as the Supreme Being but as the Creator, and besides, anyone who merely believes in a Supreme Being is probably not a proponent of Creationism anyway. Creationism is after all a result of the book of Genesis. And I intend my arguments for people of faith rather than just anyone because they have that singular point as well. In my original post I ended up getting off tangent with a discussion on the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Invisible Pink Unicorn. The discussion is not intended to make scientific types accept God, there are other apologetic discussions for that. Rather it is intended to get Christians to accept science and to see that the use of science is not an indication of a weakness or inability to create in any other way.

The first thing I realized after posting initially was that I did not intend to engage the thoughts of the scientific community, only those people of faith. Those who typically see anything scientific as not of God. I describe it as my Christian Flawed Thought. It is every bit as troublesome as the Scientific Flawed Thought. The CFT discounts the fact that science, scientific principles, and even the drive and desire to prove something all comes from God. It is not a worldly concept that merely leads to a humanistic explanation--in its purest form. Now perhaps as often as most of the time this drive does lead to a humanistic explanation. These would be the people I call "educated beyond their intelligence." Having this group of people seems to feed the belief that scientific endeavours are not of God.

Regardless of how the belief came about, or is perpetuated, there is a syllogistic gap in the logic that in itself becomes an incredulous object to those on the other side of the coin. One of my favorite authors, Douglas Adams, used the fact that the religious take any questioning of their faith as an affront to their faith and disallow it as an argument in favor of not believing in God anyway. His thought was that anything that required you to not think about it in order to prove that it exists, or that can only prove it exists by not proving it exists, must not exist. Those thinkers succumb to the Scientific Flawed Thought, that simply proving something (scientifically) is a sign that it is not from God. This also has a syllogistic gap in the logic, right at the very end, but in some ways the two flawed thoughts feed on themselves because the belief that proof shows non-existence increases the belief that the need to prove is a secular non-faith based activity.

There is still more to come on this subject, but the main point remains. Science cannot explain away God, but Christianity cannot explain away science.

Redundant Repetition

This is a post on a post. Yesterday's post to be precise. I had some reservations in posting yesterday partly because of its length and partly its content.

It grew long because of the back story, yet it was needed for the benefit of those who read my posts that don't go to church with me. I believe that most of you can relate to similar issues in your own churches. If I were politically correct I would apologize to the agnostics and atheists who may read this post, but I'm not, and I won't. Political correctness is based on the idea that you can pick up a turd by the clean end. I'd rather be biblically correct than politically correct any day of the week, so thanks for reading atheists and agnostics, but not sorry you can't relate.

In the end it is the literary content of the post I loved the most and made me publish it. The title is appropriate because that is what the guy Sunday was trying to say. As if we should have cut off our prayer, or even our lesson simply because the hands on the clock were in a certain position. Sometimes Jesus taught in the middle of the day, but some of the most memorable are when he spoke at night (see most of his boat rides). I loved the irony of the name and the length of the post. There are other parallels, but these were the most obvious.

Overall, the message of my post mimics the reason and my desire for writing. It accentuates the goal I have for this blog in that I hope to speak in many different ways to get us to review and re-evaluate our take on why we do what we do for Christ. Plus, anytime I can reference a Ted Dekker book, particularly my favorite one, it has to be good. Dekker also mimics this non-fiction theme in his first published books, one of them that ranks high on my list of books is When Heaven Weeps. If you have never read any of his works take the time, you will not be disappointed. We share a passionate love and writing spark in CS Lewis' essay Christian Apologetics. Reading that did not change my life, but it focused my walk and pushed me toward where I am headed.

Many authors think it cheapens the work to have to explain what was intended. I didn't hit on all the symbolism from yesterday in this post, that was not my point. I hoped to simply open your minds to the hidden undercurrents. Look for more, we can talk about them in the comments, but ultimately I hope you take away more from my writing than just the anecdotal stories of a prolific typist.

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Cut It Short

'I made this [letter] very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.' Pascal

It comes as no surprise to some, but I'm not very widely liked at church. Especially in the older crowd, or as I have heard them called (and often repeated) the Blue-Haired Crowd. Mind you I am not accusing all of the older generation, many of them are more God-fearing and righteous (in the right manner) than I am. In fact, there are still many I look up to. The reason for this is that unlike most in my age group, I show up at the business meetings, and I open my mouth. When I do it makes those who are comfortable in their status quo relationships at church uncomfortable.

The town I live in is one predominantly made of outsiders. People from all over come to live on the lake. Long ago I stopped asking people if they were from here and rather started asking them where they were from. My ability to discern they weren't from here was amazing to them--at least until they figured out how I did it. The church I attend, however, is full of people who ARE from here. I have had many conversations with other transplants, including some of the leadership of the church, about how difficult it is to "break-in" to the inner circle. Briefly recapping what I just said, I live in a town full of outsiders that embrace outsiders, and attend a church of insiders who don't always embrace outsiders. About 3 years ago I considered leaving, and had a friend tell me that if my family went somewhere else in a matter of 5 years we would see that things were the same there, at least here we know who is what. It was really then that I started to open my mouth.

One of my favorite authors, Ted Dekker, wrote a book entitled The Slumber of Christianity in which he described exactly the situation I see happening in the church as a whole, and my church in particular. People who get so comfortable in their Christianity and their status that they cease to zealously strive for Christ. Churches become a place to go socially, to connect with other like-minded individuals and not a place to rock the boat. They have been in the church for decades, and choose to run the church the way they want regardless of if it is the right way. Again, I do not mean that everything they do is wrong, but more often than not the decisions appear to be more self-serving than not.

An example is what happened in our recent recession. As the economy soured and money, particularly offerings and tithes, dwindled we were constantly called upon to "give sacrificially" or "give 'til it hurts." At the same time, the budget was amended to stop spending on things such as sending the staff to more conferences, less literature for the library and eliminating scholarships for mission trips.The message here was that members were to give until it hurts, but the church would be wise stewards of the money and not spend it on frivolous activities. Not only did I see this as a problem, but we had a speaker at our revival that year who specifically called out the same areas as things that were important that needed to not be cut out just because times get hard.

The lead group in this matter is one Sunday School Class which remains nameless. As mentioned a few times, not everyone, even in this class, is a part of the problem. There is a Sunday School Class of people my age that I have long joked will become the new class that does this, and I had to bite my tongue when I happened to be around when they were told they should move their class into the same room due to size (one meets while the other is in church then vice versa). This Sunday my small men's class joined them because their teacher was absent at the last-minute. Between getting started late because of this last second change and the subject we were speaking about (which in some ways hit upon some of the topics in this post) we spent 5 to 7 minutes praying at the end, and ran way longer than we should have. This in turn caused the older class to be late getting in.

As we broke up and the other class entered, I was standing in the back and a gentleman asked me who had taught today. I commented that at the last second my teacher had been called up off of the bench, smiling and being cordial. This gentleman was not very cordial or smiling and asked me if he knew he was supposed to be done fifteen minutes before. As my own mood began to change I told him no, he didn't and also that the guy in the yellow shirt was the one he would need to talk to. He told me he would just talk to the Associate Pastor (whose hats include Education Minister).

I walked away quite angry. So angry that on my way to the MPR where our contemporary service is held I decided quickly that I would not participate in the Lord's Supper (normally done on the first Sunday of each month) because my heart was not in the right place. We ended up not having the Lord's Supper, and I did calm down. Perhaps this whole post is just me ranting to get over it, I can't deny the distinct possibility of that. Part of me thinks that if he had made the comment to anyone else they would have allowed it to fall like water on a duck's back while I took it as water under a duck's butt.

It seems best for me to have been the one commented to, because I don't know what anyone else would have said or done. And that is a whole lot better note to end this rant on. In case you wondered though, the difference is that water on a duck's back falls harmlessly, water under a duck's butt sometimes gets crapped on.

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