Bible

Fractal Compassion

Posted on August 16, 2015August 21, 2015 by albrooke

From the biggest picture to the smallest interaction

Matthew 9:35-36

Math Class!

Okay, so you take a triangle, like so. A simple equilateral triangle.

Now you connect the midpoints of the sides to divide it into three triangles that are ½ as big. (There really are four, plus the original one, but it looks like three.)

Now you take each of the three, and you divide them. You have nine triangles, each the 1/4 the size of our original.

Do it again! Now you have 27 triangles, each 1/8 the size of the original. You can
keep on doing this, and the patterns are not the same, but they are similar, on a smaller and smaller scale.

This is one of the simplest illustrations of the concept of fractal geometry, which you may have heard of, and which has all sorts of useful applications in the real world. Some very simple rules (like “connect the midpoints of a triangle”) can result in some very complex and beautiful patterns.

(Don’t worry, this is not a TED talk, there’s a sermon in here somewhere.)

Continue reading Fractal Compassion

Matthew Handouts, part 1

Posted on August 12, 2015August 12, 2015 by albrooke

I am going to begin posting the handouts from the Matthew class here. Once I catch up with where we are in the class, I will probably post them one by one. Here are the general charts and chapters 1-4. Any feedback would be appreciated.

Contagion

Posted on August 12, 2015August 21, 2015 by albrooke

Holy hands, unholy world

Mark 5:21-43

In 1976, a particularly nasty contagion took the lives of 151 people in Sudan and another 280 in Zaire. The disease recurred in Sudan and took the lives of another 22 people. It lay dormant for 15 years, then took 97 lives in Gabon and 254 lives in Zaire from 1994-1997. The virus took two years off. From 2000-2004 Central African countries lost 484 more people to this disease. Two more years without deaths. We are up to 1,288. From 2007-2012, another 291 people died: 1,579 in all. The most severe outbreak of all occurred in December 2013, leading to 11,385 deaths in Africa and beyond. Last week there were another 20 confirmed cases of the disease in Sierra Leone and Guinea.

In all, about 13,000 people have died from one of four strains of the Ebola virus. The most deadly strain — Ebola Zaire — has a 90% death rate. It is a hemorrhagic disease, transmitted by blood, saliva, milk, semen, urine, vomit.

It is a horrible disease. I am not going to explain it. We live in a seriously messed up world.

Let’s pray.

* * *

I invite you to turn to the book of Mark, chapter 5, verse 21. Jesus is in the early part of his ministry, teaching in and around the large lake in the north of Israel which is called the Sea of Tiberius, of the Sea of Galilee. It is about a.d. 30. He had been on the eastern side of the lake and was returning to the western shore, perhaps near the town of Gennesaret or Capernaum.

5²¹And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea. ²²Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet ²³and implored him earnestly, saying, My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.

A great crowd surrounds Jesus, who is in danger of becoming a celebrity. He is in the midst of a large number of people who have heard of his teaching, his exorcisms and his healings — they are interested in seeing what he will do next.

Continue reading Contagion

Rembrandt at sea

Posted on August 9, 2015August 9, 2015 by albrooke

When Rembrandt painted, he (more than occasionally) placed himself in the picture as a literal witness to the events.* When I was studying for Matthew class, I noticed that Rembrandt placed himself in “Christ in the Storm” (Rembrandt is in the pink beret, holding a rope, looking out at us):

1. Rembrandt, “Christ in the Storm” (1632) (stolen from Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 1990) (1):

The nose is a dead giveaway!

2. Rembrandt, Self portrait (1629) (private collection) (2)

3. Rembrandt, Self portrait (1630) (Stockholm, Nationalmuseum) (3)

4. Rembrandt, Self portrait (1630) (4)

*For me, it was Francis Schaeffer who first pointed this out in How Should We Then Live? (1976): “Rembrandt had flaws in his life . . . but he was a true Christian; he believed in the death of Christ for him personally. In 1633 he painted the Raising of the Cross . . . . A man in a blue painter’s beret raises Christ upon the cross. That man is Rembrandt himself — a self-portrait. He thus stated for all the world to see that his sins had sent Christ to the cross.”

Fool’s Talk: The tyranny of application

Posted on August 6, 2015 by albrooke

Os Guinness observes with dismay that the modern Western obsession with “the magic of technique,” leads us to focus almost exclusively on the application question — what preachers call the “So what?” of a sermon:

“All good thinking is a matter of asking and answering three elementary questions. What is being said? Is it true? What of it? Yet one of the curious experiences of speaking in many places in the West is an almost universal preoccupation with the last question, as if audiences were incapable of answering it for themselves. A speaker must therefore provide ready-made ‘take home values,’ ‘next steps,’ ‘measurable outcomes’ and the like. I sometimes wonder if some audiences raise the first two questions at all, and I am far from certain that such insistence on formulas and recipes for action really leads to more decisive action in practice. But the hosts and chairpersons in many events act as if without spelling out all the next steps, audiences would be cruelly short-changed.”

Os Guinness, Fool’s Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion (Kindle Locations 370-375). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.

Fool’s Talk: “The Grand Secular Age of Apologetics”

Posted on July 29, 2015 by albrooke

Everyone defends their viewpoint, says Os Guinness in a fascinating new book:

“From the shortest texts and tweets to the humblest website, to the angriest blog, to the most visited social networks, the daily communications of the wired world attest that everyone is now in the business of relentless self-promotion— presenting themselves, explaining themselves, defending themselves, selling themselves or sharing their inner thoughts and emotions as never before in human history. That is why it can be said that we are in the grand secular age of apologetics.”

Guinness, Os. Fool’s Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion (Kindle Locations 153-156). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.

“Trajectory” and same-sex marriage

Posted on July 28, 2015July 28, 2015 by albrooke

It is sometimes argued that the trajectory of Biblical teaching is such that some things which are permitted in the Old Testament are restricted in the New (e.g., slavery) and sometimes the Old is restrictive where the New Testament is expansive (food laws). Recently we have heard much about this with regard to same-sex marriage. It is a complicated subject.

Darrell Bock has a good post about it today.

Darrell Bock, “The Bible and Same-Sex Marriage: 6 Common but Mistaken Claims,” The Gospel Coalition (July 27, 2015) http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/bible-same-sex-marriage-6-wrong-trajectories

“Jesus never talked to two people in the same way.”

Posted on July 25, 2015July 25, 2015 by albrooke

The Christian consensus has collapsed, and much of the rise of the so-called religious Nones is really the falling away of people who were only loosely attached to a church tradition. So there is a grand moment of clarification, and among the many things we need to clarify is our ability to communicate. Much of our witnessing, on the one hand, assumes that people are open and needy. It also assumes a whole series of formulae or recipes. I would argue that Jesus never talked to two people in the same way, and neither should we. So as part of the grand clarification of our generation, this is a time to reexamine our communication and see if it is as biblical as it should be.

from Tim Stafford, An Interview with Os Guinness, Christianity Today (July 23, 2015).

The Book of Strange New Things

Posted on July 17, 2015July 17, 2015 by albrooke

Honestly?

A decidedly odd book which reminds me more of The Sparrow than anything else, in that it is about a minister to alien people who finds that his understanding of God is stirred. A different, more dystopian vision, but beautifully written.

Readings for Rights, Wrongs & Rings

Posted on June 22, 2015June 22, 2015 by albrooke

The following links are to the “assigned” reading materials. They represent a range of views, and may help you think through the issues:

Tony Tucci, Homosexuality: The Biblical-Christian View, Bible.org https://bible.org/article/homosexuality-biblical-christian-view

Brief of Douglas Laycock, Thomas C. Berg, David Blankenhorn, Marie A Failinger and Edward McGlynn Gaffney, as Amici Curiae in Support of the Petitioners, Obergefell v. Hodges, Case Nos. 14-556, 14-562, 14-571, and 14-574 (March 6, 2015) http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&ved=0CDAQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.supremecourt.gov%2FObergefellHodges%2FAmicusBriefs%2F14-556_Douglas_Laycock.pdf&ei=_TGIVfmOOMqPyAT1mJTgBg&usg=AFQjCNGia3K9_Nu8mTE6cM57Zh2UJf_ZwA&sig2=OffJXi_KvKcV-rR1Auu9nQ&bvm=bv.96339352,d.aWw [This is a download.]

A View from the Courtroom, Same-Sex Marriage Edition, SCOTUSblog (April 28, 2015) http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/04/a-view-from-the-courtroom-same-sex-marriage-edition/

Amy Howe, No clear answers on same-sex marriage: In Plain English, SCOTUSblog (April 28, 2015) http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/04/no-clear-answers-on-same-sex-marriage-in-plain-english/

Robert P. George, Marriage and Equal Protection, The Witherspoon Institute: Public Discourse (May 1, 2015) http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/05/14941/

Abigail Rine, What is Marriage to Evangelical Millenials? First Things (May 14, 2015). http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/05/what-is-marriage-to-evangelical-millennials

Tony Campolo, For the Record, tonycampolo.org (June 8, 2015). http://tonycampolo.org/for-the-record-tony-campolo-releases-a-new-statement#.VXiqWEYjeVp

Matthew Parris, As a gay atheist, I want to see the church oppose same-sex marriage, The Spectator (May 27, 2015) http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/05/as-a-gay-atheist-i-want-to-see-the-church-oppose-same-sex-marriage/

Julie Rodgers, Can the Gay be a Good? https://julierodgers.wordpress.com/2014/10/23/can-the-gay-be-a-good/