Check Out these Bloggers!

Some of my students have started blogging and I think it's pretty darn cool. Check these out:

Karly's Blog

Elissa's Blog

Lorraine's Blog

Olivia's Blog

That's enough to make any youth pastor proud, I would think.

Peace,
Matt

Blogging Break

Sorry I haven't posted anything this month. The truth is that I've been on two "mission trips" (I hate that term) this month with my students, my wife is in her third trimester of pregnancy, and my dad's cancer has gotten much worse recently. Honestly, I don't think I'll be blogging much, if at all, until the fall or winter. Blessings to those of you who read this, and please be praying for me and my family.

Matt

Tony Jones on Orthodoxy

Tony Jones recently blogged about a paper he wrote and its response at Wheaton. I would highly recommend clicking this link and going to the bottom, where you can download the paper. It is short and thought-provoking. Please read it!

Orwell, in 1984, says "Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." Now obviously this is in the context of the book, but it remains a thought provoking statement. I guess the other quote I could share comes from Heidegger, who said (I'm paraphrasing from my memory, but hopefully will be somewhat close), "The most thought provoking thing in this, the most thought provoking age, is that we are still not thinking." No wonder he seems to stand at the starting-point of postmodernity and the end (hopefully) of orthodoxy as we have known it.

Sorry for the random, off-beat quotes, but they were on my mind and I hoped they might add something to your enjoyment of Jones' article.

Peace,
Matt

Current Book Wish List

My book-love has gotten out of control lately. Unfortunately for me I buy 90% of my books at the thrift store and none of these ever seems to make it there. So in no particular order, here are some books that I am currently desiring in a covetous manner:

1. Propaganda by Jacques Ellul.
2. The Maytrees by Annie Dillard.
3. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseni.
4. The Presence of the Kingdom by Jacques Ellul.
5. Everyday Theology by Kevin J. Vanhoozer (and others).

So why am I telling you this? Just in case you feel like buying something for me, I guess. There ya' go!

Peace,

Matt

Eastern Washington

Read this article I wrote...

I just posted a new blog article on the Silhouette page about Franz Kafka, and you should read it! I'd love comments, thoughts, questions, etc. I'm thinking of trying to write a few extended essays based on this shorter one, so feedback is especially nice this time around. And I think you might just find it fascinating.

Peace,
Matt

Church Irony

The Free Dictionary defines irony as follows: "Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs." Today I want to share a few ironic incidents I have been a part of in the past few weeks. I hope you find these entertaining. I really hope you can see what makes them ironic in the first place.

• I went to a church service recently where the pastor stood before us and said he was going to begin a new series on The Kingdom of God. I was a bit excited about this, especially because I did not expect it at all from this pastor. He taught how the Kingdom of God is different than the kingdoms of this world. Then, because it was Memorial Day, we closed by with a patriotic song and a time of remembrance for fallen American soldiers. I am definitely not against honoring people who sacrifice themselves for my country, but found it more than a bit ironic to do so after a sermon on the Kingdom of God. I tried to imagine Jesus taking a moment to thank the Father for the Roman soldiers and their hard work. It just seemed a bit strange...
• I have witnessed on more than one occassion this week the giving of a certain test at my church. It was a test to see if the test-takers knew their Ten Commandments. The test literally said that the 10 are just as important now as they were when they were given. Is it just me, or did Jesus teach something deeper? Isn't it ironic that we stick with the Old Testament when Jesus gave us something new that was supposed to move us past the Law? I wonder why we want people to memorize the Ten Commandments, but never quiz each other about the Sermon on the Mount... I'd blog on that one, but I'm sure you already know what I'd say.

How about you? Have you seen any classic church irony lately?

Peace,

Matt

Hans Kung and the Role of the Bible

After a discussion with a friend where he mentioned the book, I recently started back into Hans Kung' Theology for the Third Millennium, which I had somehow put down a few pages in and never picked back up until now. It's a great read and I thought I'd share some out-of-context quotes this morning so you could catch a small glimpse for yourself. You'll notice these are about the Bible and it's authority, which is something I'm currently re-working through:

"A Yes to the Bible, then, but - along with many Protestant theologians - an equally decisive No to the sort of biblicism that makes an idol of the literal text and rejects all criticism of the Bible as unevangelical, for the sake of a supposedly Protestant orthodoxy. The Protestant theologian too has not only the right but the duty to distinguish between testimonies that are clear and less clear, stronger and weaker, original and derivative, central and peripheral, lucid and obscure, testimonies that for all they have in common can diverge, contrast, and partially contradict one another.
Protestant theologians too - but others as well - thus have the right and the duty to do conscientious biblical criticism: textual and literary criticism, historical and theological criticism. This will not weaken the authority of the Bible, but make its light shine out anew."
(page 61)

"The writings collected in the New Testament canon do not form any sort of 'doctrinal unit.' It was not the Reformers but only the Lutheran and Reformed denominational churches, that taught the doctrinal unity of Scripture, a doctrinal system of statements from Scripture; plucked, that is, from the whole Scripture, whether in a more biblicist or more dogmatic fashion."
(page 69)

"He [Jesus] in person is the 'canon before the canon,' the 'center of Scripture,' the 'Gospel' itself... Every new age can tell the good news about this Christ in an irreducibly new way, so that in principle no one may deny the Christian character of an epoch in church history - neither of the Middle Ages, nor of the present. In these complete processes of life in the church and of the history of theology, hard and fast positions have been broken open from His side, corections have managed to become necessary and possible, now once more in the upheaval of an epoch the origins of faith can speak to us in new immediacy, the challenging primal shape of Christian faith unexpectedly becomes more lucid to us today than the ways by which it was mediated over its long history. All of these things surely belong to the healthy and happy surprises of our time."
(page 99)

"In first-and-final human questions...the special Christian experiences or, rather, the Christian message, the Gospel, Jesus Christ himself, acquires a normative meaning... The center of Scripture, the Christian message, the Gospel is he himself in person, the one who was experienced by the first Christian community as the Christ and was originally attested to in the New Testament - the living Jesus as he stands for God and man. And that is why for Christians the original testimony of this Christ, the New Testament in other words, is and remains the norma normans for all postbiblical tradition."
(page 122)