Jesus and Instrumental Praise

I'll bet you're thinking, "Well, this ought to be a short post!"

You may well be right.

Bear with me, though. Let's take a walk together back to 2 Chronicles 30. Yes, yes; I know. That was before Jesus was born. But not before He was pre-existent with the Father, right? First chapter of John?

Okay.

This chapter describes a time of great joy; the rediscovery of the Passover meal after a long period of Israel's have forgotten to all about it and what it meant. King Hezekiah sent invitations to far-flung and nearly-estranged tribes to join in this celebration of God's deliverance. Let's take up the story in verse 18:

Although most of the many people who came from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun had not purified themselves, yet they ate the Passover, contrary to what was written. But Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, "May the LORD, who is good, pardon everyone who sets his heart on seeking God—the LORD, the God of his fathers—even if he is not clean according to the rules of the sanctuary." And the LORD heard Hezekiah and healed the people.

You read that right. God let people get by with doing something that was not in accord with "the rules of the sanctuary." (Does that kinda remind you of what Jesus said about David and the consecrated bread?) Not only that, He healed them.

Let's keep going to the next verse, verse 21:

The Israelites who were present in Jerusalem celebrated the Feast of Unleavened Bread for seven days with great rejoicing, while the Levites and priests sang to the LORD every day, accompanied by the LORD's instruments of praise.

Whoa! Whoa! Back up!

Whose instruments of praise? That's got to be a mistake, right? Let's check out the KJV.

"Loud instruments unto the Lord"? That can't be right. Well, Young's Literal Translation doesn't always make grammatical sense, but we non-Biblical-language-majors have got to get to the bottom of this:

And the sons of Israel, those found in Jerusalem, make the feast of unleavened things seven days with great joy; and giving praise to Jehovah day by day are the Levites and the priests, with instruments of praise before Jehovah.

All right; those were different times. God surely commanded all those instruments back when the tabernacle was prescribed, right?

Well, uh, no. Not that I could find. Maybe you can. (Though it's possible God commanded them at the time of David or before, I get the sense that2 Chronicles 29:25 is telling us He commanded them through His prophets then, at the time of Hezekiah. I could be wrong. However, to me ...)

It all seems to have been an innovation of David, back when he rejoiced with instrumental music (and dancing!) at the return of the covenantal ark to Jerusalem - then he added those instruments to the cache of things to be used when the temple would be built (beginning in I Chronicles 6, and continuing throughout the work). Four thousand instruments, as I recall.

A few of those instruments may have been among those who returned with Nehemiah and Ezra from Babylonian captivity.

And continued for the next several hundred years, through at least two more major versions of the temple. Now we're up to the time of Jesus, and the temple where He worshiped ... and the synagogues where He also taught ... and the upper room where He sang a hymn with His closest friends before going out to the Mount of Olives.

Did He sing with instruments, according to the traditions of David the temple architect, and Solomon the temple builder, and Hezekiah the re-celebrant of Passover, and Nehemiah and Ezra the temple restorers?

Or did He stand there while others did so, frowning, silent, teeth grinding, arms folded in disgust, wondering if He should make a whip of cords and drive the whole lot of them out?

Or is there absolute evidence that no Jew celebrated in song with instruments at temple or synagogue worship in century one?

Bear with me a few more moments, while I pursue three metaphors.

1. If you read my blog, would it occur to you to e-mail me: "I found this great Star Trek thing really cheap on eBay, and I wanted to get it for you, but I know you hate Star Trek now, so I didn't."? Because my response would be, "What? What gave you the idea that I hate Star Trek?" Would you respond, "Well, you've haven't blogged anything about it since May, 2006 and you said you used to watch too much of it, so I know you must hate it now."?



2. If you were putting together a kit and among the instructions was a stapled slip of paper over step 3 that said: "This design has been changed and improved. In step 3, you should attach part A to part B, rather than part C as previously stated," would you immediately think, "Oh! Well, then steps 1 and 2 are completely irrelevant now, and part C is completely extraneous and even dangerous to the structural integrity. I'll just start with step 3 and leave out part C."?



3. If you were an attorney presenting a case about suffrage before the Supreme Court, would you argue: "Since the 21st amendment to the Constitution repealed Prohibition, all previously-enacted clauses are invalid. Women are absolutely not permitted to vote in open elections in the United States."?

Then why - whether we view the Old Testament as 1.) God's expressed preference for us, 2.) His instruction for our benefit, or 3.) His law for the satisfaction of His own righteousness - would we do essentially the same thing with regard to instrumental praise?

Especially if His Son and His Son's followers in century one (saying nothing about the matter in scripture) in all likelihood participated in instrumental worship with joyous singing, heartfelt thanksgiving, deepest respect, and highest praise?

Jesus the Proof-Texter

It was the ultimate confrontation between good and evil and absolutely everything in the human cosmos was at stake ... and possibly beyond.

The temptation, of course. I'm not even sure the modifer "of Jesus" is necessary. This is the temptation.

Catching Jesus at His worst - which still pretty doggone perfect - Satan plies the lonely, mostly-starved young rabbi-to-be with his best shots. Scripture lets us in on three of them.

And Jesus answers them all the same way.

With proof-texts.

If you've read my blog for any length of time, you know I positively have an aversion to catching myself using proof-texts. It offends me less when others do it than when I do - because I truly and deeply value scripture in its full context. I love that so much of it is narrative. I love the story, the back-story, the characters, the conflicts, the values at stake, the gain that can be achieved and the loss that is risked.

I respect context as a would-be and occasional writer. Sometimes that context can be too deep and exhaustive for its value to be included in a blog post, though. And sometimes, scripture just says what it says - whether it's in context or not.

My guess is that Satan was intimately familiar with it, context and all.

After all, when Jesus' first and second response is to quote scripture, the devil starts quoting it right back at Him.

So - there are devilish interpretations of scripture, after all. (Notice that Satan quotes a Psalm as if it were a law to be obeyed and proven. Jesus responds from Deuteronomy as if it were a law. Which it certainly would be.)

Do we put the Lord to the test when we insist on interpretations of scripture that aren't His? I'm betting so.

When we're presented with interpretations which we cannot see as His, is it permissible to respond with short, simple, devoid-of-context proof-texts from scripture?

Jesus, the Confrontational

Luke 4:14-30 tells a story about Jesus that still shocks me.

After reading Isaiah 61 to his faithful hometown synagogue attendees and commenting that it was a prophecy now fulfilled, they reacted favorably and perhaps even with surprised awe - "Isn't this Joseph's son?"

But, for this understandable misapprehension, Jesus replies in a very confrontative way:

"Surely you will quote this proverb to me: 'Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.'"

"I tell you the truth," he continued, "no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian."

So, furious, they drove him out of town and would have thrown him over a cliff - except that He walked right through the gathered crowd and went His way.

I wonder if their admiring doubt was all that precipitated this outburst. The description of apparently the same event in Mark's gospel that I blogged about a few days ago leaves out the attempted murder ... and his observation that "He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them" makes me wonder if that lack of faith drove His pointed commentary in the synagogue.

Did they welcome Him in town so they could see the miraculous things He had done elsewhere in Galilee - rather than to actually hear what He had to say? Only to discount what little they saw as impossible, because He was Joseph's son?

Maybe that's the rest of the story that we don't see in Luke.

I know Jesus knew men's hearts and thoughts (Matthew 12:25 or Luke 11:17; Luke 6:8; and maybe even John 2:24-25). I know that we - well, at least, I - don't have those abilities. I know we aren't to judge others.

Yet I also know that He took people on when they doubted God or tried to re-write His Word or thought better of themselves than of others; His brand of meek and lowly had nothing to do with always bowing to the expectations of such people.

(This, obviously, is not the only example. For more, see my post from June 15. Or better yet, a Bible in your neighborhood.)

And I know that He lived an exemplary life, a life worthy of our emulation.

So does Jesus expect us to be as confrontational as He was?

Jesus, the Reluctant Physician

As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. Simon's mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told Jesus about her. So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them.
That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: "Everyone is looking for you!"

Jesus replied, "Let us go somewhere else, to the nearby villages so I can preach there also. That is why I have come." So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons. - Mark 1:29-39

If I could heal sick people at will, do you think there is anything else that I would bother doing in this life? If I could sneak in while patients were sleeping, touch them and remove their cancers, stitch up their broken bones, give sight to their eyes, eradicate the viruses and germs - do you think you could drag me out of the hospitals with chains and a tractor?

Not a chance.

Obviously, I am not Jesus.

I don't see things as He did and does. I don't see what sin does to people; how it rots them from within and brings death to their cheery, healthy, happy-looking faces.

I will confess something to you, though. I've had a glimpse.

Not just in this life, but in a dream a few nights ago. A nightmare, actually. I dreamed that I could see the effect of evil on people. I dreamed that I could even see objects that had been used for evil purposes, and I saw them differently. They were grotesque underneath their translucent skins, in the kind of way that H.R. Giger designed the black-and-bleached-white flesh-ripped-from-bone world of the creature from the movie Alien and its sequels. Horrific, dead-through-and-through, rank with wickedness, eaten up with malice, consumed by self.

I think I once blogged that I wished I could see things as Jesus sees them.

I no longer wish it.

I understand now - a tiny fractional understanding - the way He sees evil, and sees it in us.

What I cannot comprehend is why He loves us anyway.

But I now have a greater appreciation for His desire, when tempted to spend His time healing the physical, to move on with the good news that brings healing to the inner man.

Jesus - and 'Daddy'

"Abba, Father," he said, "everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will." - Mark 14:36

Abba. It's the Hebrew equivalent of "Daddy." The first word babies can put together, whether they realize it or not.

In this case, a desperate plea: for mercy, for release, for any other way for His will to be done.

My friend Jim lost his faith over this moment in scripture. He had just become the father of a beautiful little boy. Good man. Husband. Science instructor. Could not get past the idea that God could allow His only Son to die when He could have done anything and everything to stop it. Jim's faith crumbled. Not long after, his marriage crumbled. And his son grew up, of necessity, with a part-time dad.

It's a moment in scripture that shatters my heart, too.

Because parents have to send our kids out into a world that will have its way with them. We have to let them go. We have to let them live. Sometimes, we have to let them die - because we can't be with them all the time; and we can't always keep them safe.

And if you look at it only with respect to one life lost and one death taking place, it will destroy your faith in this incomparable truth, too. But there is so very much more at stake here.

There are the lives of thousands of millions on the line. There is a perfect plan, a uniquely just and merciful scheme of redemption to rescue as many as will through the sacrifice of One. The One knows He must make that sacrifice, both as Father and Son.

So I see it differently than Jim did.

I can see myself letting my strapping 14-year-old son dive into dangerous waters to drag as many drowning others as he could to a deck or a dock where I could pull them to safety. I can see that, as a 50+ year-old, I would have a role in that rescue - and that he, as a strong, excellent swimmer, would be better suited for another role. If he were willing, I would want him to try. And if anything went wrong, I would be right in there with him to make sure he made it to safety, too.

I'm not sure I could live with my conscience - whatever the outcome - if I didn't let him try.

That would be just the merest human example. The rescued would not even have to be familiar to me for me to want my son to try. They would not have to be other children of mine, estranged from me and yet precious to my heart.

That's who the endangered are to God, you see; they are and always have been His children - no matter how prodigal; no matter how lost; no matter how hateful and hurtful and proud and rebellious. They are His still children.

And He is their "Abba."

His Son knew that. So the will of the One who stood by became the will of the One who would die.

Like Father, like Son.

Jesus the Exasperated

Okay, I'm reading between the lines here. (At least I try to admit it when I do.)

Because you won't find in most versions of the Bible a phrase that specifically describes Jesus as exasperated. Mark, however, twice records Jesus doing something that other gospel writers do not:

He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, "Ephphatha!" (which means, "Be opened!" ). - Mark 7:34

He sighed deeply and said, "Why does this generation ask for a miraculous sign? I tell you the truth, no sign will be given to it." - Mark 8:12

I don't know about you, but I have been known to sigh when exasperated. When I exptected more, or better, or smarter. I've sighed for other reasons, too. But in the context of these verses, Jesus sounds exasperated to me.

He used other expressions that support my suspicion. "You of little faith," He addressed Peter, who had failed to walk on water. As well as all of the chosen, when a storm nearly swamped their boat ... and when they didn't understand His warning about the leaven of the Pharisees. He also upbraided a whole group of followers who heard him describe how God clothes the field with lilies. That conversation began when someone tried to get Jesus to arbitrate an inheritance disagreement, and Jesus responded: "Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?"

Then there's the time early in His ministry, John records, that He evicted animal merchants and money changers from the temple courts, telling them, "Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!" Perhaps the incident presages His return some years later to do the same thing, and add: "It is written, 'My house will be a house of prayer'; but you have made it 'a den of robbers.'"

And He went so far as to call some folks "snakes" and "vipers," and called Peter "Satan" once. That had to hurt.

It all sounds pretty exasperated to me.

You can probably think of more explicit examples.

"In your anger, do not sin," advises Psalm 4:4. But being angry itself, or even just exasperated, is no sin.

It is human.

So was Jesus.

The pattern I suspect, though, is that most of us humans get ticked off about relatively small things.

As I recall the situations that seemed to exasperate Jesus, they were when other folks couldn't see the big picture because of their focus on the microscopic. When they couldn't see the eternal beyond the transient.

A sign or miracle that would only last as long as memory and life. A storm that would pass. A chance to make a few bucks from an inheritance, or from a temple worshiper who didn't have the right kind of money or the right kind of animal to sacrifice. A fascination with this temporal life, with no hope nor faith for a life that cannot end.

Am I reading between the lines?

Or do the lines converge on Jesus' point each time - putting everything into perspective?

Jesus the Short-Circuited

As a conduit of God's power to heal on the earth, Jesus seems to have been shorted out on occasion.

I'm not talking about those instances when He - as many have said - went to "recharge His spiritual batteries" in prayer, alone or with His closest friends, after exhausting missions.

No, I've got two specific instances in mind from scripture. One is found in Mark 6:1-6. He could heal just about anywhere - except at home, where virtually no one believed in Him. The last two verses of that citation read:

He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. And he was amazed at their lack of faith.

I don't know if there's a cause-effect relationship there. But I suspect it. The reason is found in the second instance, in the previous chapter (Mark 5:21-34). He has gone to help Jairus' gravely-sick daughter when a woman in the crowd about Him reaches out in faith that just touching His garment will heal her, too. He stops, apparently surprised; feeling power leave Him. He asks who touched Him, and she knows what He means by it and confesses. He tells her that her faith has healed her. Did He have nothing to do with it, as far as His own will is concerned? If so, then hers was enough. If not, perhaps He was waiting to see if she would act upon it.

We know that when He walked this world, He could divine the thoughts of others. To what extent, I'm not sure we can accurately surmise. Maybe the din of the crowd's thoughts around Him drowned her out. Maybe He knew exactly what she prayed for.

But in the previous instance, there was an almost-complete lack of faith. And He apparently could do little. Mark's gospel doesn't say that He wouldn't, but that He "could not." Perhaps His power was, in fact, short-circuited by the lack of faith around Him. Perhaps those around Him refused to recognize the miracles He performed for what they really were - supernatural acts of God on earth - because it would naturally follow, then, that the Mary's son they knew (with four brothers and at least a couple of sisters) might not be the carpenter's boy after all.

The point I'd like to get to doesn't depend on the correct answer to those questions, fortunately.

In both these situations - and in many more - I find evidence that Jesus actively wanted to work through the faith of the people around Him. I don't believe that has changed. In fact, I believe that His Spirit is sent among those of us who seek to follow Him for that very reason and purpose.

That prompts the uncomfortable question:

Are we short-circuiting His power in the world today - not because He can't work around us, but because He wants to work through us - simply by our lack of faith?

Jesus the Farmer

That's how Jesus pictures himself in parables in Matthew 13:1-40.

Sowing seed. Rooting out the weeds sown by an enemy. Harvesting the good grain at the end of the season.

Pointing out that even the tiniest seed can grow into a tree sturdy enough to support the nests of birds.

You know He's the farmer for certain in the last of the parables in that group, because He says so (v. 37).

This is an accurate agronomical forecast he's giving.

You're not going to get 100% yield.

Sow anyway. Sow all you can.

Sow even along the edges of the path where the birds will eat it up. They have to poop sometime, somewhere.

Sow even among the rocks in the sun. You never know what might spring up, even for a short time.

Sow even among thorns. You're not responsible for them choking out the new growth.

Sow on the good soil, too. You might get a hundred times more seed-bearing plants. Or sixty. Or thirty.

Sow even where the enemy tries to sabotage the harvest by planting weeds. it'll all be sorted out later.

In the first parable with the different soils, the seed is the word of God. In the later one with the weeds, it is the sons of the kingdom.

But who's the farmer in the first parable?

I think it's us.

I think from the first parable's phrasing, we're to sow the same way He does in the later one:

Any way and anywhere we can, expecting nothing, weeding out bad teaching (such as a false "gospel" of wealth in this life) just in the same way He weeds out bad teachers ... then rejoicing at whatever growth God gives and whatever harvest the angels bring in.

It's pretty amazing how much a Carpenter knows about planting and seeds and trees. How sin began with a tree, and ended with one. How God cast man out of a garden, and men took God captive in another. How that story becomes a gospel that grows like dough with yeast. How we grow to maturity in it, and it grows in us, and we grow more like Him.

But He gets that knowledge honestly.

As I recall, His Father planted that first garden in the east, in Eden ...

Jesus the Thief

That's how He referred to Himself, at least once.

The backstory is in Mark 3:20-30:

Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, "He is out of his mind."
And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, "He is possessed by Beelzebub! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons."

So Jesus called them and spoke to them in parables: "How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. In fact, no one can enter a strong man's house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can rob his house. I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin."

He said this because they were saying, "He has an evil spirit."

Jesus was the thief in the story He told, carrying off the possessions of Satan - the "strong man." By exorcising demons, he was tying up the strong man and stealing back what belonged to God.

Not a metaphor most of us Christians would use for ourselves.

Maybe we should.

Maybe we ought to be more about our Father's business of stealing back His kidnapped children from the enemy.

Maybe it would help if we realized that we're not alone in the Godfather's business ... He has given us His Spirit to unite His kingdom and empower us to tie up the strong man just as Jesus did.

The deep irony of this metaphor, to me, is that Jesus describes the unforgiveable sin as blasphemy of that Spirit - the one they had called "evil" - by comparing His mission to breaking and entering and tying up the owner and theft.

Something we would, under normal circumstances, consider quite wrong.

Unless the justice of this world had failed, and it was the only way to take back the ones God loves who had been abducted by Satan.

The irony would be hilarious.

- If the stakes weren't so high.

Christians, Unite

The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth

Does the Bible really claim to be that middle part?

I believe that the Bible is sufficient to lead a person into a relationship with God through Christ that will save from sin and bring meaning and purpose to a life that will be eternally blessed. I don't know that I can tie that down to a single scripture, or even a concatenation of unrelated scriptures. Still, I believe it. It's a "big picture" kind of belief.

But I don't believe that the Bible is - or claims to be - the answer to every question about living for God that can come up in your life.

Is that heresy?

Some folks will quote John 16:13 and interpret that as meaning that He has revealed all truth, and there is no more truth. Does it say that?

But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.

Hmm. It's a promise from Jesus to his closest friends - on His last night with them before being betrayed, tried, tortured and murdered - that the Spirit will "guide you into all truth." He doesn't say "reveal all truth to you." He doesn't say the Holy Spirit will "tell you everything that is yet to come." He doesn't promise them that the Spirit will reveal all of the answers to all of their questions about godly living, or church government, or acceptable worship. I don't see it.

Peter's opening praise to God in his second epistle (2 Peter 1:3) is sometimes excerpted to prove that New Testament scriptures provide us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Really?

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

I don't read anything about scripture there, nor above it, nor below it, to put the idea of "scripture" into the context of that verse. And while His divine power is revealed in scripture, it is not exclusively revealed there. It's also made plain through His creation (I'll proof-text right back with Romans 1:18-20). How else can you explain the exemplary behavior of so many people who have never heard of God, or who have never known enough about Him to believe? That's Paul's argument in his opening salvo to Rome: The proof of God's goodness is all around us!

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

Now, I understand the appeal of sola scriptura. But I think we also need to admit the evidence that scripture introduces - God's nature as revealed through the inherent goodness of His creation. Truth can be discovered outside of scripture, from the ways in which creation might have taken place - to the encryptive process of the human genome; from the reasons I don't want to admit to myself that I hold certain beliefs/prejudices - to the depths of desperation felt by a person who loves God and his or her church family, but is starved with homosexual cravings.

Book, chapter and verse for those, anyone?

Folks might also quote 2 Timothy 3:16 as saying that scripture is all-sufficient in all matters.

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

First off, the scripture Paul is referrring to would have to be the Old Testament; Timothy wouldn't have had the New (except, of course, the letter he was holding and maybe a couple of others), because he said Timothy had known it from his youth. So it's a stretch to say that he's referring to a canonized Bible. That aside, though - since when does the word "useful" or "profitable" mean "all-sufficient"?

Look, I'm not trying to be contentious here. I just don't want to try to make scripture say more than it's trying to say ... or to make it more than it is.

It's God's word. He chooses what and how much He wants to say.

Once again, let's be honest. Scripture leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Human logic can, in all good conscience, take the same passage and mean two very different things. But even human logic cannot defend the conclusion that because those things are different, one is automatically right and the other is automatically wrong.

Do we really have to dig into that thing about eating meats, especially if sacrificed to idols?

That was a question of conscience. The council at Jerusalem tried legislating it. As nearly as I can tell, legislating didn't work. In the end, it turned out to be something you could do in good conscience (it helped if you were a Gentile), but might have real difficulty doing with a clear conscience if you were a Jew.

Was the scripture available in century one all-sufficient to answer that question?

No; the situation required some spiritual guidance and some new scripture to be written. And in the end, Christians really just had to use the guidelines provided and sort it out for themselves.

They were forced to think about it, meditate on it, study existing scripture about it, do a logic-check on it, do a heart-check on it, pray about it, discuss it with each other and decide whether their own freedom of conscience - or tenderness of conscience - was restricting someone else's in an un-Christlike way. They were tempted to either insist on their own way as right, or they were inspired to accept others as different on the issue but still siblings in Christ.

You won't find that part of the story spelled out in scripture, will you?

It has to be a lot closer to the whole truth. You know it is.

Because now you're forced to think about it, meditate on it, study existing scripture about it, do a logic-check on it, do a heart-check on it, pray about it, discuss it with each other and decide.

Does the Bible claim to be all-sufficient when it comes to truth?

Is it possible that God shares His Spirit with us to guide us into all truth today because He intentionally left some blanks unfilled next to the test questions of our lives? (Just like He did for Job?) That some of those answers we need to work out together? That working them out together will bless us far more than insisting on the certainty of our positions?

I believe it's vitally important to all of us to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

So help us, God.

Friend of Institutional

I decided I needed one of those logo bugs for my site. You know, like "Friend of Emergent" or "Friend of Missional." So here it is!

Actually, I'm a friend to all kinds of churches and all kinds of followers of Christ and seekers after God.

I'm even a friend to some folks who don't want to have anything to do with the idea of God. Good folks. Good friends. Not Christians. Not seekers.

So I post this at the risk of looking like one of those people that my late uncle Gene Ellmore more than once described as those who "like to choose up sides and smell armpits."

It's not that I'm being exclusive.

It's just that I wasn't sure how many logo bugs I could fit on my site, and somehow it seemed like no one was creating one for good ol' institutional church - like the one where I work and worship.

Institutional church ain't better. It's just different. Just like us Christians ain't really any better than folks who ain't Christians. We're just better off, in the long view of life and blessings and relationship with God.

So here's to good ol' institutional church: You've got your own logo bug, now.

I think what my college roommate Steve Leavell said about our alma mater can be said about church, and just as flippantly:

"She's a great institution. But who wants to live in an institution?"

Folks who are crazy about Christ, I guess.

If You Only Have Time To Read One Blog Post Today ...

... make it this one:

My Friend Lost A Son.

Brian Mashburn is going into my list of must-read blogs.

Unhinged Thought for the Day, #2

You know those commercials where there are guys walking harmlessly in and out and among slow-motion automobiles while collisions and accidents are taking place all around them?

One of these days, the Allstate Insurance guy is going to back into the Mercedes-Benz guy while they are filming commercial spots at speeds approaching that of light itself, and the resulting impact will vaporize both of them.

Those Eureka Moments

If you've read my blog for very long, you already know I am crazy about my wife, my kids and Eureka Springs - especially the ES&NA Railway, where I proposed and she said yes.

So any time I can get all of them together, it's especially wonderful for me, and last weekend I did.

We did the trolley buses, the toy stores, the great places to eat, the excursion railway ride, and even the Passion Play. It's called the Great Passion Play. Maybe I'm too critical, but if I were still writing advertising copy for clients in Eureka Springs, I would only rate it as the Pretty Good Passion Play.

It is outdoors, in a wonderfully hilly and wooded setting with terrific sets, special effects, costumes, animal and human extras, and cast. Since it's pre-recorded and the actors just mime to the dialogue, it loses some of its power to me. And the script is a little odd at times. While it's been carefully edited to remove any reference to "the Jews" that might sound anti-Semitic, some moments and lines have been added to Jesus' last week in Jerusalem that you won't find in a Bible I know of.

There's the healing of the little crippled girl in front of the temple, who leaves her crutch behind and races into Jesus' arms. Do you remember that moment in scripture? It might have happened. But I don't think anyone wrote about it.

I don't remember Jesus having a tussle with Satan in the tomb, either - but the dialogue and special effects sure did imply it heavily!

And I guess I just was a little put off by the voice talent who recorded the role of Jesus. If Jesus' voice broke occasionally, I think it would add dramatic effect to some of the moments portrayed. But this actor's voice was faltering in just about every blinkin' line!

But, you know, we went there for the kids. And it was just about right for them. Matthew, the consummate teenager at 14, kept trying to divert my attention from his moist-eyed empathy by asking how certain special effects were done. And 11-year-old Laura - very quietly, afterward in our hotel room - was asking her momma what all it means to be baptized.

You see, for all the things this would-be writer would try to "set right" in the Passion Play script, there was a lot that was already "right" about it - and it didn't shy away from baptism at all.

Listening to Angi quietly and gently speak with Laura about baptism while Matthew and I overheard is one of those Eureka moments that will always be precious to me.

Now, to divert your attention from any moist-eyed empathy you might have experienced reading this: Matthew's YouTube video of good ol' diesel locomotive #4742 smashing coins on the tracks as it passes - and featuring a one-second cameo by Laura:

• Coupling to the passenger car


• Recoupling to the passenger car


• Turning around on the turntable