I was listening to an interview with Ravi Zacharias by a Syrian broadcaster, and he was mentioning how he didn’t like the word ‘conversion’, but rather preferred the word ‘transformation.’ I agree with him.

Conversion relates more to an object, like money exchange or metrics
Transformation is more about the human experience

Conversion suggests an end-point; a completion
Transformation entails a process

Conversion suggests an exchange of religions
Transformation is a movement towards difference

If you are being drawn to the person of Jesus, don’t convert to this thing called Christianity, rather… be transformed into his kingdom, into his arms. Transformed to be the person you were meant to be.

How do you know what you know?

It strikes me that almost everything we know comes from somebody else. What I know about how my body works is not because I’ve done the scientific work myself, it is a reliance on those who have. What I know about the right foods to eat; how computer programs work; how the economy works; how to write and play music; etc…

As a Christian, when somebody asks me how I know Christianity is true, my response is because of testimony. The Christian faith is grounded on the testimony of those who experienced Jesus first-hand and wrote about him:

“We have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.” – 1 John 1:2

However, it’s not just past historical testimony, but living testimony as well – the testimony of changed lives, and the internal testimony of the Spirit. The combination of these three elements of testimony is why I am a Christian.

But my point is.. learned knowledge passed down by others is not inferior knowledge, it is the way we know almost everything. Of course that doesn’t mean all knowledge is of equal value. We live in the information age where we have vast amount of knowledge at our fingertips. We personally have to make decisions about what is valuable.

When it comes to knowledge, we are not the original source of our understanding, we are the recipients of testimony.

The Bible, particularly the Old Testament can sometimes be difficult to read.

By this, I mean that the culture, how society functioned, how people thought, what was important to people, etc… all requires some interpretation. For us Christians, viewing the Bible as the word of God adds complexity when we try to extract timeless principles in odd places. After all, if it is God’s Word, then wouldn’t it be easily and perfectly clear to understand?

I could be wrong here, but I think that since we make the Bible out to be fully divine… that we sometimes lose the humanness and messiness inherent. Perhaps this is why I like the idea of an incarnational Bible. What Incarnation means is that you start with the human dimension, and then the divine enters into that.

“This is what it means for God to speak at a certain time and place—he enters their world. He speaks and acts in ways that make sense to them. This is surely what it means for God to reveal himself to people—he accommodates, condescends, meets them where they are. The phrase word of God does not imply disconnectedness to its environment. In fact, if we can learn a lesson from the incarnation of God in Christ, it demands the exact opposite.”
– Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation

For example, let’s take the topic of what theologians call anthropomorphism. That basically means that when God shows up, he is described in human characteristics. So, there are parts in the OT were God rationalizes with people; where God changes his mind; where he re-thinks his actions; where God is angry with his past action to create the world. What is going on here?

For the modernist, these are troubling passages because it doesn’t fit with God’s attributes. But if we view this as incarnational, it makes perfect sense.

Now… what is not meant by Incarnational is that the Bible is a wholly human book with some God sprinkled in various places. I think the pendulum can swing too far in either direction. The objective is to view it as both God breathed and human spoken.

“for God to reveal himself means that he accommodates himself. To be understood, he condescends to the conventions and conditions of those to whom he is revealing himself. The word of God cannot be kept safe from the rough-and-tumble drama of human history.”
– Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation

When someone asks the question “do you believe in evolution?” the premise behind the question usually means that if you do, then you must not believe in God. The problem with the question is that it doesn’t address the real issue of origins.

The creation/evolution debate tends to be surface-based discussions about method. Such as… At what level does evolution happen? where is the distinction of species? how does evolution relate to the Biblical creation story? while all of these are good discussions, the challenge from the God-believer against evolutionary scientific claims should not be about the method of evolution, but about the purpose of evolution.

The pro-darwinist will often state that evolution is not just about random mutation, but is a purposeless process; it is evolution by chance or by accident. This I believe, is outside the bounds of science. There is no experiment or objective evidence in science that shows purposelessness. There is no scientific data that describes the reason why one organism evolves into another organism.

The real question about origins is to ask ‘what is responsible for life?’

Is life a result of a purposeless beginning or process, or does life result from something purposeful? The answer comes from a place of faith, by both the theist and the atheist. Not from science. Therefore, the atheist cannot, nor shouldn’t appeal to science for a blind-evolutionary claim.

“Humility is the thing which is for ever renewing the earth and the stars. It is humility, and not duty, which preserves the stars from wrong, from the unpardonable wrong of casual resignation; it is through humility that the most ancient heavens for us are fresh and strong. The curse that came before history has laid on us all a tendency to be weary of wonders.

If we saw the sun for the first time it would be the most fearful and beautiful of meteors. Now that we see it for the hundredth time we call it, in the hideous and blasphemous phrase of Wordsworth, “the light of common day.” We are inclined to increase our claims. We are inclined to demand six suns, to demand a blue sun, to demand a green sun.

Humility is perpetually putting us back in the primal darkness. There all light is lightning, startling and instantaneous. Until we understand that original dark, in which we have neither sight nor expectation, we can give no hearty and childlike praise to the splendid sensationalism of things.”
– G.K. Chesterton

Hurricane Irene devastated parts of New Jersey last week. Complete towns under water and many homes and businesses destroyed. When the hurricane was approaching, the news media saturated the airwaves with the details of the storm. But that’s not the real story.

Today’s media coverage shows the post-devastation, and there are many images and video depicting the insane flooding.

But that too, is not the real story.

The real story begins when the water recedes. It begins with the countless people who have lost homes and have to rebuild lives. It begins with pain, and coming to grips with what was lost. That is the real story.

The hope for some though, is the realization that what was lost was stuff. That there is something more transcendently real then the stuff that was lost. A friend of mine wrote a wonderful letter about how his experience with the previous floods in the last several years and eventually the destruction of his home in this last storm, taught him about the value of ‘heavenly things’ over earthly things. My friend saw God in the storm, not as the bringer of the storm like some wrathful act, but working within the storm… to bring about good.

What happens when the water recedes? that is the real story.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” — Jesus Christ, found in Matthew 6:19-20

The following post was inspired by a sermon by Steve Hawthorne on Sept 4th, 2011 at emergence NJ.

A worldview is basically how one perceives reality. Everybody has a worldview whether they think about it or not. How one interacts in life is a result of their worldview, even if it functions subconsciously for them.

Today, we like to compartmentalize aspects of life.. so we have this thing called religion, and then politics, and then finance, etc… and we may have differing viewpoints in how these categories function.

However, this oddity of fragmented worlds is new in the history of the world. The pre-modern world (before 1600′s) did not seem to make these distinctions. Politics, piety, spirituality, and ethics were one and the same. One’s spiritual world cohered with how they thought about morality, about economics, about govt, etc…

I’m pretty sure that when Jesus announced that the kingdom of God was at hand, he wasn’t referring to a private spiritual experience for people. It was something that would affect every aspect of their lives. When the apostle Paul traveled around the Mediterranean claiming that Jesus was Lord, people understood that this was a threat to Caesar. It wasn’t about a private religious observance.

What our thoughts are about God, who we are as people, where we came from, and how we perceive the world, are the foundation of our worldview. Then… our economics, politics, mission, ethics, family-life, etc… should cohere with that foundation. Instead, we often compartmentalize stuff because it is less risky to do so.

It is interesting that those who do try to unify their worldview are often considered radical. If you try to unify your thoughts about religion with politics, religion with science, politics with academia, economics with ethics, etc… society will regard you as radical.

However, it seems perfect sense to do so.