I don’t drink alcohol because I basically don’t want to. It is my choice and it has nothing to do with anyone else telling me what I can or can’t do. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of beers I’ve had in the last year, and it won’t even take all the fingers! I don’t need any fingers to count the number of mixed drinks or glasses of wine.

But there’s just enough sin nature in me, and just enough of an independent “think for yourself” streak that if someone were to tell me I couldn’t, I’d probably start.

That’s the funny thing about sanctification. We start out doing something out of personal conviction and devotion, thinking that our choice is meaningful. But then somebody tries to codify a choice that we’ve made freely and suddenly we recognize that our freedom has been taken.

I’m no longer doing (or not doing) because the choice is an expression of my values; I’m doing it because it expresses someone else’s values.

Which brings me to Shankar Vedantam’s column, “When Play Becomes Work.” It turns out that when external incentives are brought to bear on internally motivated behaviors, trouble ensues.

Psychologists have long been interested in what happens when people’s
internal drives are replaced by external motivations. A host of
experiments have shown that when threats and rewards enter the picture,
they tend to destroy the inner drives. Paychecks and pink slips might
be powerful reasons to get out of bed each day, but they turn out to be
surprisingly ineffective — and even counterproductive — in getting
people to perform at their best.

I studied a lot of business leadership and change management when I went through the doctoral program at Western Seminary. It is well known in the business literature that giving assembly line workers a say in how production is run, consulting with the mechanics and toolmakers when an engineering problem needs to be solved, or listening to the staff that actually provides customer service increases productivity and profitability.

Why? Because people want to work for something more than a paycheck. They don’t want to be seduced into behaviors they don’t really believe in by external checks and balances. They want what they do to be motivated by something within - the notion that what they do matters and that they are a valued team member.

It’s about the internal motivation.

I had an exit interview with the Dean of Students when I graduated from Christian Heritage College in 1978. During the interview Dean Wilson asked if I had any suggestions that might improve things.

“Eliminate mandatory chapel,” I said. “Take attendance and interview the kids who don’t attend to find out what’s going on. Maybe you’ll find out that your speakers are boring. Maybe you’ll find out those kids really aren’t believers. Or maybe you’ll find out what hinders their devotion to the Lord and be able to deal with it.”

Even though it was cogent, brilliant and spot on, it fell on deaf ears.

It’s easier to penalize kids for not attending compulsory chapel than it is to improve your program and connect in a meaningful way with young lives still in the process of formation. Finding the motivation is hard work. It requires us to listen, to understand and to appreciate.

I don’t know what motivates me to be a teetotaler. It is a matter of personal preference.

Now, good cigars? That’s another matter.

Tags: Psychology of motivation, Abstaining from alcohol, Sanctification

Our small group has been struggling with boredom. Slogging through the prophets, week after week for seventeen weeks is turning out to be a tall order!

Maybe you’re tempted to write us off as a bunch of shallow, unspiritual folks because we don’t revel and rejoice in the power and the antics of these boring old men.

But could it be that we’re trying to wade through material that was scattered over at least 400 years of Old Testament history in just a few weeks? Maybe the some of the mind numbing quality, the sameness of it all is because these guys were, well, boring!

Think about it.

The Bill Collectors of the Old Testament

These were the bill collectors of the Old Testament. Just like a bill collector sends out PAST DUE notices and phones to warn you of all the bad things that will happen if you don’t get current, the prophet mainly reminded the Israelites of the agreement they’d made with God and warned them of what would happen if they didn’t stay current.

Trying to persuade people to do what they’d promised is a boring job and a thankless task.

In the prophets’ case, their message was shaped by Israel’s covenant with God. The covenant was established to govern the relationship between God and people he had redeemed. But Israel’s history was characterized by persistent rebellion against God, primarily in the sin of idolatry.

So the prophets’ messages mostly took the form of lawsuits initiated by God.

Pretty boring stuff if you think about it. How thrilling is it to read a Supreme Court decision?

This is why the folks in my small group have a hard time sustaining interest through the four major and the twelve minor prophets.

<tags>Minor Prophets, Old Testament Prophets, Bible Study</tags>

At lunch yesterday I learned that God had been working behind the scenes to bring a new DivorceCare facilitator to the fore.

On a Friday I got word that our DivorceCare facilitator would have to step aside for personal reasons. On Sunday I taught a session in our Ministry Partner’s Training forum. The following Thursday I got the spiritual gifts inventories and interest assessments from those who attended the forum. And on top of the pile was the form from a man with excellent administrative and teaching gifts who indicated that his first interest was working with the the divorced!

A week later (yesterday) we had lunch to discuss his interest and our opportunity. He told me that the night before I called him he and his small group buddies had been discussing his desire to get more involved in a ministry at the Heights. My call comes the next morning!

Is that a God thing or what?

Over 35 years ago an attorney friend warned me that “justice” is an illusion in America’s courtrooms. “The law means what a judge says it means,” he told me. The outcome of any given case is always a coin toss. The Supreme Court’s recent antics are case in point.

So it will interesting to see what becomes of the latest goofball litigation. A homosexual has recently filed a $70M lawsuit against several Bible publishers, claiming that their Bibles have inflicted harm and violated his constitutional rights.

Weasel words by a judge don’t surprise anyone anymore. In response to the case, brought by an ex-con, a federal judge said, “The Court has some very genuine concerns about the nature and efficacy of these claims.”

But catch what the legal eagles from Zondervan have to say! “Since Zondervan does not translate the Bible or own the copyright for any of the translations we publish, we are not in a position to comment on the merits of how a word should or should not be translated.”

Right. This from the folks who pushed TNIV.

Weasels.

Tags: Homosexual Agenda, Federal Courts, Bible Translations, Zondervan

Doomed to a fatal delusion over climate change | Herald Sun

Writing in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Joshua Wolf and Robert Salo of our Royal Children’s Hospital say this delusion was a “previously unreported phenomenon”.

“A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne with an eight-month history of depressed mood . . . He also . . . had visions of apocalyptic events.”

“The patient had also developed the belief that, due to climate change, his own water consumption could lead within days to the deaths of millions of people through exhaustion of water supplies.”

But never mind the poor boy, who became too terrified even to drink. What’s scarier is that people in charge of our Government seem to suffer from this “climate change delusion”, too.

Tags: Global Warming, Environmentalism

Time magazine seems to be an “early adopter” when it comes to novel ideas and oddball theories about the origins of Christianity and the ancient church. They rushed to print the debunked idea that the bones of Jesus’ brother, James, had been discovered, but word of the refutation never saw the light of day on Time’s pages.

They’re at it again. Fiction writer Reporter David van Biema asks, “Was Jesus’ Resurrection a Sequel?” as a means of suggesting that a hitherto unknown tablet may point to a pre-existent fable of a dead messiah rising from the dead on the third day. It is a thinly veiled screed filled with innuendo, what-ifs and sensational wonderment, all based on the hunch of “one Israeli scholar.”

It begs the question of whether or not the doctrine of a dead-and-risen messiah is to be found in the Old Testament.

This, in turn, undermines one of the strongest literary arguments
employed by Christians over centuries to support the historicity of the
Resurrection (in which they believe on faith): the specificity and
novelty of the idea that the Messiah would die on a Friday and rise on
a Sunday. Who could make such stuff up? But, as Knohl told TIME, maybe
the Christians had a model to work from. The idea of a “dying and
rising messiah appears in some Jewish texts, but until now, everyone
thought that was the impact of Christianity on Judaism,” he says. “But
for the first time, we have proof that it was the other way around. The
concept was there before Jesus.” If so, he goes on, “this should shake
our basic view of Christianity. … What happens in the New Testament
[could have been] adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an
earlier messiah story.”

File that one under “Duh”. The real question is not whether there was a literary antecedent for the belief in a risen messiah, but whether or not it is to be found in the prophetic passages of the Old Testament.

Take a few minutes, see if you can tease out the reporter’s logic and presuppositions and poke holes in the argument.

Tags: Resurrection, Messiah, “Gabriel’s Revelation”, Time Magazine

I started some preliminary research in Matthew in preparation for preaching the book when my name comes up in the rotation. In my mind the primary message in Matthew, the idea I want to convey in an overview sermon of this type, is that “the kingdom will be established when the king returns.” It’s not as precise and comprehensive as I might like, but it’s a good place to start.

Right now I’m reading the book to capture the big picture and to understand how the various pericopae fit into the argument of the book. At the moment I’m simply making a few brief notes about the chapters, with occasional notes that help me frame how the challenging portions fit.

More to follow…

Tags: Bible Study, Gospel of Matthew

Detroit is getting the message that buyers want autos that are decked out with all the goodies - sunroof, leather, nav systems - but still sip the gas. Now that there’s an actual market for the 100 mpg auto engine, maybe the moonbats who believe the automakers have conspired against the public will get smart.

As for me, I think I’m set. The p-wife’s Honda averages 32 mpg, my Corvette averages almost 28 mpg at highway speeds, and around town I ride my bike or my 80 mpg scooter.

One thing about that USA Today article: did anybody catch the fact that gas in Europe is $7 per gallon? How is it that we can sell gas here for $4+ per and those poor dopes pay an additional $3 per? They’re closer to the oil sources in the Middle East than we are!

What’s the explanation for that?

Socialist government.

So go ahead and elect Obama. You’ll pay for it at the pump.

Tags: Oil Crisis, 100 mile carburetor, Obama

I’ve been thinking about buying a UMPCs like the Dell E, the MSI Wind, the HP Mini or the Asus EEE PC. But the p-wife and I are in the midst of preparing for financial meltdown if the local economy continues to its death spiral. So no UMPC in the works for a while.

What’s a sleepless geek to use at 3 a.m. to browse the news and write blog posts?

Felicitous circumstance (or the divine intervention of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God) directed me to solution in a Computerworld article, “This old laptop: Revitalizing an aging notebook on the cheap.” In a moment of inspiration I thought, “I know what I’ll do, I’ll refurbish that old Toshiba that’s gathering dust in the drawer!”

It’s an old Toshiba Satellite 2805-S402 that was decommissioned years ago. I’ve thought about throwing it away on several occasions, but just never did. The machine’s taken a lot of abuse in the seven years we’ve had it; several keys were missing, the paint was worn off the case under the area where my palms rested while I typed, it was dirty and it hadn’t been serviced in years.

So it was a project. Now that the project is finished the old unit is getting a lot of new use. In fact, I’m using it to write this post. It’s been refurbished in several ways:

• A new keyboard
• Completely dismantled and cleaned
• Repainted the case (it now sports a shiny red cover and case!)
• Installed Ubuntu 8.0.4
• Blew out all the dust

The unit is now perfect for those “roaming sessions” late at night or early in the morning. It is lighter than the HP Pavillion zd7010us, it’s got a Broadcom wireless card that connects to our wireless hotspot, and all the needed software.

So by my calculations I’ve saved around $475 by NOT buying that UMPC.

Now, what can I do with that money?

Tags: UMPC, Computer mods, Toshiba Satellite

According to a University of Michigan study the world is getting happier. I know this is hard to believe, but that’s because you subject yourself to the constant barrage of the MSM. Bad news, after all, does sell advertising. And that’s what they’re in business to do!

But the rest of the world seems to be getting happier even while we Americans are allowing ourselves to wallow in misery! Even though we live in the greatest nation on earth (and in history) we’re 16th on the list, somewhere between Denmark (happiest) and Zimbabwe (unhappiest).

And the result bode ill for the future. Think for a moment about the erosion of our liberties and rights here in America, particularly the Court system’s willingness to overrule the will of the people and the legislature’s failure to exercise its Constitutional control over the courts while you read this quote from the article.

The researchers note it’s important to wonder why there’s been an increase in happiness. Over the time studied, even in developing countries, there’s been greater economic growth, democratization, and expanded social tolerance. According the the survey, democratization and tolerance have had a greater impact than economic growth on people’s self-described happiness over the past 25 years.

This leads to a rather interesting point by the researchers. “The results clearly show that the happiest societies are those that allow people the freedom to choose how to live their lives.”

A dozen or more countries around the world are experiencing ever greater degrees of liberty (and with it, happiness) while we find ourselves being slowly chained by unelected bureaucrats and judges who answer to no one.

Tags: Happiness, Freedom, Supreme Court

HT: Regina Lewis

I grabbed the May issue of National Geographic’s Adventure magazine at the doctor’s office. I figured, “What the heck? Getting the annual physical at my age is always an adventure…”

An article entitled “Ties That Bind” by columnist Laurence Gonzales captured my interest. Apparently he’s a regular contributor of an ominously named column, Deep Survival.

This particular article is a series of vignettes sharing a common theme: those with deep and meaningful relationships are more likely than loners to survive harrowing and potentially deadly circumstances. Stories of kayakers trapped in strainers, sailors stranded at sea, hikers stranded in the wilderness and of prisoners in the Nazi extermination camps pepper the story with gripping human interest.

A while back I taught our deacons and elders the biblical theology of the pastoral office. My exegetical work in the course of preparing the lessons led me to several conclusions. Among them were that the pastor must give strong, protective leadership and that he has the primary responsibility for protecting the peace and the purity of the church.

A recent discussion has motivated me to re-examine these conclusions in light of Titus 1:7. Does this verse in some way attenuate the strength of the pastor’s leadership?

The specific word in Titus 1:7 which needs to be examined is variously translated as “overbearing” (NIV), “self-willed” (NKJV, NASB) and “arrogant” (NET). The widely varying translations shout out, “Dig here. Dig deeper.”

Bottom Line

Should politicians who make public policy decisions that are in part based on their religious faith have to defend that faith, or at least that part of it that informed that decision?

That’s the issue under debate here.

This should lead to a more interesting discussion. Is it possible to develop a principled approach to government in a multicultural environment?

Tags: Religion, Presidential Politics, Barack Obama, Church and State

I had this conversation with a church guest Sunday before last. The brother visiting us was theologically astute. He wanted to know where I was “coming from.”

I replied that I am theologically conservative, that I practice LHG exegesis in the scripture, and that it is the sole source of authority for theological truth. He asked whether we had a baptistic background to which I replied, “Yes.”

Then he asked if I was an evangelical, to which I replied, “Absolutely not.”

Evangelicalism is no longer the label of choice for conervative, Bible believing Christians. Rather, it has been coopted by our feel good, roll your own religion multicultural society.

Want proof? Here it is.

Among the more startling numbers in the survey, conducted last year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life: 57 percent of evangelical church attenders said they believe many religions can lead to eternal life, in conflict with traditional evangelical teaching. In all, 70 percent of Americans with a religious affiliation shared that view, and 68 percent said there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their own religion.

USA Today covers the report in greater detail. Highlights:

• 78% overall say there are “absolute standards of right and wrong,” but only 29% rely on their religion to delineate these standards. The majority (52%) turn to “practical experience and common sense,” with 9% relying on philosophy and reason, and 5% on scientific information.
• 74% say “there is a heaven, where people who have led good lives are eternally rewarded,” but far fewer (59%) say there’s a “hell, where people who have led bad lives and die without being sorry are eternally punished.”
• 70%, including a majority of all major Christian and non-Christian religious groups except Mormons, say “many religions can lead to eternal life.”
• 68% say “there’s more than one true way to interpret the teachings of my religion.”
• 44% want to preserve their religion’s traditional beliefs and practices. But most Catholics (67%), Jews (65%), mainline Christians (56%) and Muslims (51%) say their religion should either “adjust to new circumstances” or “adopt modern beliefs and practices.”
• 50% say “homosexuality is a way of life that should be accepted by society,” but the most consistently traditional religious groups say society should discourage it - 76% of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 68% of Mormons, 61% of Muslims and 64% of evangelicals.
• 51% have a certain belief in a personal God, but 27% are less certain of this, 14% call God “an impersonal force,” and 5% reject any kind of God. “People say ‘God,’ and no one knows who they mean,” says Kosmin, director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.
• 14% of all surveyed, including 28% of evangelicals, say religion is the “main influence in their political thinking.”

D. Michael Lindsay, a sociologist of religion at Rice University, sums it up this way: “The survey shows religion in America is, indeed, 3,000 miles wide and only three inches deep.” Can I have an “Amen!” to that?

Tags: Multiculturalism, Evangelicalism, Exclusivism, Christianity in America