Digenis.org

Sometimes I like to think that John Piper’s current sermon series on marriage was divinely appointed to line up with Katya’s and my engagement. The series has included some great exegesis and unpacking of Genesis 2:18-25, Colossians 2:13-15, Colossians 3:12-19, and Ephesians 5:21-33.

In the most recent message Piper made an analogy between forgiving/forbearing and the compost pile:

Picture your marriage as a grassy field. You enter it at the beginning full of hope and joy. You look out into the future and you see beautiful flowers and trees and rolling hills. And that beauty is what you see in each other. Your relationship is the field and flowers and the rolling hills. But before long, you begin to step in cow pies. Some seasons of your marriage they may seem to be everywhere. Late at night they are especially prevalent. These are the sins and flaws and idiosyncrasies and weaknesses and annoying habits in you and your spouse. You try to forgive them and endure them with grace.

But they have a way of dominating the relationship. It may not even be true, but it feels like that’s all there is—cow pies. I think the combination of forbearance and forgiveness leads to the creation of a compost pile. And here you begin to shovel the cow pies. You both look at each other and simply admit that there are a lot of cow pies. But you say to each other: You know, there is more to this relationship than cow pies. And we are losing sight of that because we keep focusing on these cow pies. Let’s throw them all in the compost pile. When we have to, we will go there and smell it and feel bad and deal with it the best we can. And then, we are going to walk away from that pile and set our eyes on the rest of field. We will pick some favorite paths and hills that we know are not strewn with cow pies. And we will be thankful for the part of field that is sweet.

Our hands may be dirty. And our backs make ache from all the shoveling. But one thing we know: We will not pitch our tent by the compost pile. We will only go there when we must. This is the gift of grace that we will give each other again and again and again—because we are chosen and holy and loved.

Even a city boy can appreciate the strength of that analogy. I’m looking forward to the continuation of this series and hope that I can glean some application points for my future marriage.

McSweeny’s Short Imagined Monologues: Professor Richard Dawkins speaks at Fair Hills Kindergarten regarding Santa Claus, December 2, 2006. (via Kottke)

Ryan Ferguson performs a dramatic reenactment of Hebrews 9 & 10 (via ManSpeak)

This past Saturday, May 13, 2006, one of this century’s greatest Christian intellectuals passed away. Jaroslav Pelikan, who served for many years as Sterling Professor of History at Yale University, wrote more than 30 books, including the 5-volume The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine.

A few Pelikan quotes, in remembrance:

Tradition is the living faith of dead people to which we must add our chapter while we have the gift of life. Traditionalism is the dead faith of living people who fear that if anything changes, the whole enterprise will crumble.

To invoke a Kierkegaardesque figure of speech, the beauty of the language of the Bible can be like a set of dentist’s instruments nearly laid out on a table and hanging on a wall, intriguing in their technological complexity and with their stainless steel highly polished–until they set to work on the job for which they were originally designed. Then all of a sudden my reaction changes from “How shiny and beautiful they all are!” to “Get that damned thing out of my mouth!”

Dr. Pelikan’s life and accomplishments inspire us not to live a mindless Christianity. Rest in peace.

I think most people will agree that Christians have, at various times throughout history and throughout our own lives, been jerks. Time to own up to that and apologize, for what it’s worth. Hopefully it will be worth something to someone.

Here’s what you can do:
1. Check out the photos.
2. Download and print the Sorry We Christians Have Been Jerks PDF.
3. Write your name or city (or whatever) on the sign and take a picture of yourself holding it.
4. Upload your picture to Flickr and tag it with these tags: sorry sorryeverybody sorrychristians (three separate tags - this is essential for the meme to work).
5. Tell all your friends and get them to do the same thing (hint: just write your city on the sign and pass it around when you’re with a bunch of people, and take pictures of each of them holding the sign).
6. Most importantly, mean it, and contribute to a global, lived-out apology to the world for the way Christians have acted (or failed to act).

Here are a few other Christians taking part in the meme:
Justin Baeder
AndyThompson
Chris Tessone

Join us.

Little Miss Reformed, an American living in Kiev, has posted an interesting paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 13, titled A Guide to Culture. I think it’s a great guide for Christian expats or folks doing immersive langauge study in a foreign country:

If I speak with the tongue of a national, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

If I wear the national dress and understand the culture and all forms of etiquette, and if I copy all mannerisms so that I could pass for a national but have not love, I am nothing.

If I give all I possess to the poor, and if I spend my energy without reserve, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love endures long hours of language study and is kind to those who mock his accent; love does not envy those who stayed home; love does not exalt his home culture. Love is not proud of his national superiority.

Love does not boast about “the way we do it back home,” does not seek his own ways, is not easily provoked into telling about the beauty of his home country, does not think evil about this culture;

Love bears all criticism about his home culture, believes all good things about this new culture, confidently anticipates being at home in this place, endures all inconveniences.

Love never fails: but where there is cultural anthropology, it will fail; where there is contextualization it will lead to syncretism; where there is linguistics, it will change.

For we know only part of the culture and we minister to only part.

But when Christ is reproduced in this culture, our inadequacies will be insignificant.

When I was in America I spoke like an American, I understood as an American, I thought as an American; but when I left America I put away American things.

Now we adapt to this culture awkwardly; but He will live in it intimately; now I speak with a strange accent, but He will speak to the heart.

And now these three remain: cultural adaptation, language study, and love.

But the greatest of these is LOVE.

- Author Unknown

Amen. Beautifully worded.

I haven?t had much extra time to blog lately, but I?ve been meaning to post my thoughts on France?s recent decision to ban religious symbols from their public schools.

Frankly, I think it?s counterproductive to the goals the law itself is striving for (integration and decreasing religious discrimination) and an infringement against the religious rights of students. It?s one thing for a school not to teach or promote a particular religious ideology; it?s another to altogether restrict the students from wearing a headscarf, skullcap, or necklace that symbolizes their faith.

If officials in France think that this law will help to integrate Muslim into their schools, they are dead wrong. If anything, it will cause many muslims (and perhaps people of other faiths) to drop out of the public school system and seek a private education.

“I am His by purchase and I am His by conquest; I am His by donation and I am His by election; I am His by covenant and I am His by marriage; I am wholly His; I am peculiarly His; I am universally His; I am eternally His.”
-Thomas Brooks