Thanks for the Prayers

Thank you for the prayers for the Ingram and Keller family. Both situations are improving. Please continue to pray.

Been a tough weekend...

Be praying for some people I know.  Jeff Ingram, the man mentoring me at Boyd Buchanan, had to rush to Alabama.  Both his parents had been shot after an altercation with their neighbor.   His father was hit in the shoulder and is doing well, but his mother was shot twice and is in the ICU.  Another neighbor tried to help and was shot and killed.  Please pray for this family.

If that were not enough, a fine young student at Boyd was in a car wreck late Saturday night.  His broke his back, punctured a lung, and fractured his skull.  He is awake and when asked what day it was he said. "Sunday...I am missing church."   I will keep you posted.  His name is Nick Keller.  Please pray for him and his family.  And take some time to hug and tell your family you love them.

Behold the Man.....

The end of the year at school is often a great time to be lazy. Several of my students were on a physics trip to Six Flags today. Basically they get to go "learn" about physics while the rest of us are stuck at school. Maybe I should motion for a trip to Jerusalem so we can better "learn" about the bible. Can you tell I am bitter? Well at least it rained for the first part of the day.

Any who, I came up with a ridiculous excuse to not give a test and showed a video on the search for the historical Jesus. My kids were less than thrilled. I think they would rather have had the test.

I love the historical context of the Bible. From Mesopotamia right through the Roman Empire, the Bible presents such a rich backdrop for its events to unfold before. Well as we (mostly just me) watched the video, one girl asked "why don't we have any pictures of Jesus?"
It was a simple question with a much more complicated meaning than the girl probably ever realized. We have descriptions of Caesar, Alexander the Great, Buddha etc, why no Jesus?
And it was brought home to me that this current generation really relies on tangible connections for their lives. It is not enough to just believe or have faith (which is a dangerous and at the same time intriguing place to be) that belief or faith needs to be real to them. Otherwise it is just something they discard, like Santa Claus.
Now it becoming real can occur in many different forms: life circumstances, historical inquiry, generational teaching, and relationships. But increasingly kids want/need to see Jesus. The girl that asked the question was essentially saying "if we have all this "good history" about Jesus, how come no one took the time to write what he looked like?" That is a very fair and simple question. If Jesus was so important to his followers, why not tell us what he looked like? The answer deals with something most people are not willing to explore. It may not be important to them or the may not want to delve into the culture to find out why some things are the way they are. It may take too much work.

Israel is a unique group in ancient history because the were not artistic. They did not even decorate their pottery. One way archaeologists can determine if a site is Jewish or not is by looking at the pottery. Bichrome pottery is a type common in the ancient world. It was basically decorative pottery. All the cultures around the Israelites used this type (Philistines, Phoenicians, Greeks, Roman, etc.). Israel did not decorate their pottery, nor did they paint, write secular poetry, or write secular themed plays. In fact Israel was almost devoid of any artistic output save for religious writing. Religion was the art of Israel.

Also depictions of kings would have come across as idolatrous. This was true into the 1st century. When the gospels refer to Jesus as a Jew, that is all the imagery they needed back then. Most Jewish men had short hair, beards, brown eyes, and a dark complexion. All that was needed was for the author to bring that image into the minds of gospel readers. By telling the reader Jesus was a Jew, that image would have sprung to mind and really no more description was needed. He was also a carpenter and was probably physically fit.

Now as I began to explain this to her, she became sorry she even asked. The answer was too much for her to care about. She wanted to be able to read a short concise description of Jesus and leave it at that.


This is a product of people becoming less familiar with biblical study. We neglect the details that illuminate scripture. Being ignorant of Israel's history leaves one wanting in their search for Jesus. Why did Jesus need to be a sacrifice? Why was sacrifice important? What is sin and why does God hate it? Why was Jesus Jewish? Why did he claim to be God? To often people want to read scripture and come to their own conclusions so it can fit what they want rather than what the writer intended. Simply cherry-picking scripture so as to "describe" something is very very dangerous and has brought us to our current problem of division. For too long we have neglected the context of scripture to find a quick, easy, and concise description( and thus answer) to some problem.

A more important question we should ask is what should the Church look like? Should it be an institution that tends to neglect circumstance and context in favor of a quick answer? Or should it be an institution willing to take the time to think, love, and act regardless of the conditions. Jesus never regarded the conditions of people that he came into contact with as anything more than a chance to reveal Godly love to them. If we can do the same, with God's help, that will be a good start on making Jesus real in our lives, so he can be seen as real to others.

Official from the time of Hezekiah identified

In Isaiah 22:15, the prophet chastises several officials of Hezekiah for their opulence. One such individual was Shebna (or Shebnayahu with the theophoric yahu attached). Well in 1870 a tomb from preexilic Judah was discovered, but was not translated until 1953. It was a tomb for "Shebna, the servant of the King, who is over the house" and is almost certainly the Shebna from Isaiah 22. More recently some seals from the same period have come to light and Biblical Archaeology Review has a good article on tracking down Shebna.
This is just another instance where the Bible accurately recorded of very minor detail.
If it gets the minor details correct, what about the major ones?
Check out the BAR article here.

New Randy Harris Book

Mike Cope has an post about the new Randy Harris book here.

I love to hear Randy speak but have been unable to see him recently. The last time I heard him was at Gulf Coast Getaway in '04 or '05. I am looking forward to getting his book and you can too, here.

This is offensive.....

Follow the link.

http://sev.prnewswire.com/art/20090424/NY0498524042009-1.html

This painting is pretty offensive to me.

If it was a snake.....

I follow several movie sites and one of them has an editor that i frequently read. He is an avowed atheist and comes from a Catholic background. Below are his thoughts on the Last Temptation of Christ.

"When people talk about their favorite Martin Scorsese movie they're probably talking about something along the lines of Goodfellas or Taxi Driver. When it's me talking about that subject, it might very likely be The Last Temptation of Christ that I'm discussing. I've written about this movie a lot in my time at CHUD, simply because I find it one of the most moving motion pictures of all time. It's the kind of movie I could see basing a faith on; Scorsese's depiction of Christ (based, of course, on the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis) is a harrowingly human take on the messiah, and one that I can understand. I never understood a Jesus who got nailed to that cross without a serious second thought, a Jesus who was so sure of his own divinity (and so filled with the divine in his day to day life) that this was an irritation instead of a terror. To me the Jesus I learned about in Catechism was Superman while Scorsese's Christ was Peter Parker as a teenaged Spider-Man - filled with doubt, filled with fear, but doing the right thing anyway, no matter how much he'd rather be doing something more comfortable and safer. Of course a lot of other people do not agree with this. They want their Jesus to be Superman - perfect, unknowable, without flaw. And they get pretty worked up about this particular difference of opinion, and when The Last Temptation of Christ came out they made their difference of opinion known loudly, and in at least one case, violently.Thomas R. Lindlof's Hollywood Under Siege: Martin Scorsese, The Religious Right, and the Culture Wars is a must-own book that tracks not only the tortured route Temptation took to the screen (Scorsese tried to get it made for years; at one point he told Paramount he would direct Flashdance 2 if they gave him the money to make Temptation) and its production but the insane backlash the film caused in the Christian community.Lindlof did a ton of research - this was released by an academic press - and he has an incredible insight into the world of the people who started the protests and the voices that tried to shout down Universal and Scorsese. One group raised money in an attempt to equal the film's budget so they could buy the negative and burn it. Thousands marched on Universal Studios, despite the fact that not a single person in the protest movement had seen the movie that upset them so greatly. And all across America theaters that dared to show the movie were targeted with bomb threats. A guy actually drove his truck into a theater playing Last Temptation.Lindlof makes a very convincing case that The Last Temptation of Christ was the Pearl Harbor of the Culture Wars that we're still fighting to this day. It's a terrifying story of massive intolerance, religious ignorance and superstitious idiots as well as an inspiring story of a director's vision and an executive's surprising commitment to that vision. Universal could have just dropped Scorsese and Temptation, but they fought with him to the bitter end. That's the kind of stance it's hard to imagine the Tom Rothmans of the world taking today.Why were these religious lunatics so upset? Because the movie shows Jesus having sex with Mary Magdalene, marrying her and having kids. But it shows this in the context of an illusion, a temptation Satan (in the form of a little girl) throws at Christ as he's on the cross. In the last moments Jesus is forced to see the life he is denying himself - the love, the happiness, the human moments - so that he can fulfill a vague destiny he doesn't fully understand. I'm not religious in any way but this concept, of a man who gives up everything (and who understands what he's giving up; this Christ isn't a complete monk who is afraid of his flesh, he's a man who battles with it) for the benefit of everyone yet to come, is one that I find incredibly emotional and meaningful. A god getting up on that cross is devoid of impact - a man, a real man, who feels like a real man feels, getting up on that cross is almost mind blowing.Scorsese's film is beautiful and inspirational, and it's also a touch weird. The low budget means that there's a seriousness sparseness to everything, but I think that works. And Scorsese's vision of the Twelve Apostles as regular dudes does serve to keep many people from really getting into the movie. Harvey Keitel, playing Judas, and the rest of the guys use colloquialisms and urban accents (lots of Brooklyn here) to make you understand that these guys were the blue collar men of their day. The accents we're used to in Biblical films - hoity toity English - are just as phony, but at least these accents are trying to recreate an aspect of who these men were.The Last Temptation of Christ is long, and it can be difficult, but I think it's completely rewarding. I don't think streaming on Hulu with commercial breaks is the best way to see this movie, but this is a movie you must see, and if not now, when?"

I have not seen this particular movie and don't really see anything wrong with it. I will check it out. But I am sorry that Jesus has been so miss represented to him. When I read the Gospels, it is the human side of Jesus that shines through. He is a man that cares for the outcast and downtrodden. He doesn't want to go to the cross, but he must. What strikes me is that God was willing to become a man. Yes he performed miracles but it was his interaction with people and the compassion he showed them that made him unique. In all others religions, the deities are annoyed by man. Man is an inconvenience to them. YHWH deeply cares for mankind. He was willing to give up his life and everything that would have come with it. It was what had to be done. When I read the Gospels, I see the exact Christ that the author of this selection desires to experience.

I hate that ignorant believers do so much harm to un/post churched.