The Death of the King

With the recent death of a "famous" singer in California and the worldwide outpouring of grief at his passing, need I say anything about the death of a "famous" teacher, or about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of "unknowns" who changed this world and the people in it for the better? When the final analysis is complete, is a person's "music" the defining factor or is it their "character" and "relationships." Does all the good that a person performs outweigh their negative actions?

How does this relate to the Bible? The recent news simply accentuates the difference in values between those who "love the world and the things in the world" and those "have the love of God in them." When entertainment value is the defining factor, our value system is in need of a new compass.

Learning the Bible, Part 2

After discussing the Pendulum effect, I had a variety of thoughts so I'll stick to the most pertinent. Pendulum's are amazing things. They are attached at a "pivot" and consist of a "bob" and a "rod" that suspends from the pivot and is attached to the "bob." In my reflections on the previous post it became apparent that the analogy used implies that the "pivot" would be God, the "bob" us, making the "rod" something that connects us with God, lets call that faith just for fun.

Then I went to this amazing site (actually, not so amazing but it was an early hit on a Google search) that made this statement: "The pendulum must be suspended from a rigid support. During operation, any elasticity in the support will allow tiny imperceptible swaying motions of the support, which disturbs the clock's period, resulting in error." (Wikipedia: Pendulum, 6.22.2009)

So one moral of the story is: "If you're life is going to be lived as a pendulum, be sure your support is solid!" A second goes like this: "The closer the bob is to the rod the shorter the period of oscillation (the time it takes to travel the distance traveled between the extremes)."

Learning the Bible

Today I had the pleasure of a lengthy discussion with a former student at Friends who is now in graduate school. These discussions are a tremendous joy as I am able to see how the time at Friends is now maturing as they become more than they were and begin to take on an understanding of who they are and how they fit in the world.

Today's discussion focused on the Pendulum effect of learning. So much of our learning is like a pendulum, we take one position and later begin to learn another perspective that is dissimilar. We abandon our previous position and swing to the other side. Thus our world goes like the pendulum of a clock. The difficult part is realizing that when we are at either end of the pendulum swing we are still under the influence of the other position as it pulls us back. Only after time do we learn to balance the tension between the two positions.

The main question is really, what keeps us from falling off the pendulum and crashing down? Is there an authority higher than reason? Do we actually have something that can solve the pendulum swing paradigm?

Since this is the 'biblemanblog" you can already predict the answer. The purpose of the Scriptures is to provide a standard that lets a person have distinct positions and evaluate them against something beyond themselves. The Scriptures provides a centering purpose for our lives, if we will let it. Too often we use the Scriptures to support us on the extremes and keep us from falling.

Here's to solving the Pendulum Paradigm.

Live Long and Prosper

I just returned to my computer after seeing the movie Star Trek with my sons.  You are probably asking what does Star Trek have to do with the Bible!  The answer is "more than you think." But for this blog, there is only one comparison worth noting.

Near the end, Leonard Nimoy (Spock 1) greets Zachary Quinto (Spock 2) by  saying "I am not our father." Despite the temptation to discourse on the Lord's Prayer or Pater Noster or "Our Father" I will refrain.  However in departing, Nimoy avoids the traditional "live long and prosper" and closes with "good luck", seeing how the whole time travel incident has taken him back and he has already "lived long and prospered," making the greeting a bit redundant.  That is worth mentioning.  

The whole journey of faith is one of perspective. When our perspective is skewed, then our life's attitudes, actions, and logical analysis also become skewed.  The Star Trek film indicates that returning to the past with the end results already known leaves any wish for a successful future a bit overspoken.  But if I may be so bold, this is exactly how God intends for us to live. Because we live in a world situation that has been altered by God the rules don't apply to us in a restrictive and depressing manner.  Instead we have the promise of the god who intervened in human existence to bring about a new manner of living, a resurrected manner of living, that should alter our perspective from fear to faith, from despair to hope.

If it is possible in a movie to envision a change of time and realities, is it not possible in a Christian life to envision a change of time and realities?  It is this new perspective, this transformed mind, that the disciple of Jesus is called to embrace.  When we embrace this reality, our reality is altered by none other than the God who created both time and space.