Snow, Book Recommendation, “Agape Love”

a)

I met a guy here named Snow. It reminded me of the rapper. Then I found this. Check it out.

edit: upon further inspection, there is substantial amounts of booty in the Snow video. The value is just in the listening, so if you are sensitive to such shaking of booty, perhaps you would do well to just listen to it and avoid viewing the actual video. In regards to the Jim Carrey video, there is minimal booty, though you might want to be prepared to skip over one or two parts. Nevertheless, Snow song = good.

b)

One of the most interesting books I’ve read this year is Exegetical Fallacies by DA Carson.

A friend of mine quipped that “if you don’t know what either of those words mean, maybe it’s not the book for you”. But I still recommend it, cause although it might take more attention than a Don Miller book, it’ll definitely help you as you try to daily read and interpret the Bible.

Basically, it’s about typical mistakes (fallacies) people make when interpreting the Bible (doing exegesis). The only part that I felt unable to read was the grammar part (my Greek grammar is… non-existent). You’d probably have no problems either.

One example of how what I read is actually practical to your life:

“One of the most enduring of errors… (is that) every word actually has a meaning bound up with its shape or its components. In this view, meaning is determined by etymology… All this is linguistic nonsense” (28)

“although it is doubtless true that the entire range of agapao and the entire range of phileo are not exactly the same, nevertheless they do enjoy substantial overlap; and where they overlap, appeal to a “root meaning” in order to discern a difference is fallacious…there is nothing intrinsic to the verb agapao or the noun agape to prove its real meaning or hidden meaning refers to some special kind of love” (31-32)

And there’s tonnes more.

c) Why this matters?

A common dangerous teaching I hear is that God has a special “Agape love” (for a more complete argument for why that is fallacious, see Exegetical Fallacies by DA Carson). This love is NOT a feeling, it’s an action (Luv is a Verb haha). Just to get a taste of what people usually say, I googled “agape is not an emotion”. Here’s one of the first things I found:

“agape is a choice. It is based not on emotion but on deliberate decision…. Phileo, storge, and eros can all be legitimate expressions of agape, but not one of them by itself is a sufficient base upon which to build a meaningful and lasting long-term relationship”

That was in a marriage book. Now, usually a careful teacher (like this one) will not go this far, but what I’ve witnessed is that people think they can be loving even if their hearts are totally uncaring towards others. They think they can love God by sheer duty. They think they can obey the standard of Jesus Christ through self-wrought willpower.

This thinking also comes from the erroneous understanding of the Christian life that says, “you can’t control your emotions. Therefore, God can’t command them”.

That is emphatically wrong. Here’s what John Piper writes:

“emotions are not under our immediate control like acts of willpower seem to be. But… Emotions are commanded throughout the Bible. The Scriptures command joy, hope, fear, peace, grief, desire, tenderheartedness, brokenness and contrition, gratitude, lowliness, etc.”

By committing this word-study fallacy (the root fallacy) and not using the context to determine the meaning of the word, both immature Christians and the unregenerate alike are able to justify the lack of supernatural Christlikeness in their hearts.

I can very easily go to Church with a lukewarm heart and sing songs through my own willpower. My willpower cannot give me a spirit of Thanksgiving and Gratitude. I can figure out what 10% of my income is and drop it on a plate without the Holy Spirit. I can’t do so joyfully without the Living God transforming me from the inside-out.

This should drive us to our knees each day asking for the Holy Spirit to fill us instead of trying to eek out man-made obedience.

Christian living is not will-power religion. It’s the overflow of a new mind and new heart created by the Holy Spirit. It is supernatural. You can’t produce it on your own. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17) – John Piper

My New Small Group, Prayer, and "Bible Sharing"

a)

I’ve started going to a small group at my Church (well, its in a guy’s dorm, but its with my Church… you know what I mean). It’s pretty interesting. It’s almost all African guys, but the meeting is super short – one hour. That covers – singing, sharing from the Word, Prayer, and soft drinks.:

I) That’s amazing for any group of Christians
II) I’ve never been to Africa, but from what I’ve heard, that’s amazing for Africans.

Anyways, haven’t really been able to connect with people yet, but I hope to.

b)

One thing that impressed me (besides it’s time length) was their prayer. The prayer is both quick and efficient (take requests, and pray for them one by one korean style), and exciting sounding (loud and invigorating). I really feel like I’m really making progress in prayer. It makes me believe what John Piper says about prayer that it is a “wartime walkie-talkie for the accomplishment of missions commands”

I’m definitely not a great man of prayer. This year I have really felt a desire to see growth in that department, and though I’ve seen progress, I definitely don’t think I’m anywhere near where I wanna be.

Something I think I have grown in understanding is that there are different kinds of prayer, which, when done in faith, are all pleasing to God. I’ve seen the joy in having radical battle prayers as well as the sweet fellowship of just resting in God. The latter is something I’m definitely not good at, since my tendency (especially in the organization I work for) is to be very do, do, do. To realize that God desires us to just rest in Christ’s love and reflect slowly and meditatively on His promises in a Godward way is very difficult to me.

c)

However, something I don’t like about the group is their “Bible sharing”. First, someone is picked to share something from the Word (it’s apparent that the assumption is that everyone is capable of doing this without guidance) and then the floor is opened to anyone desiring to share something. The result is very well-intentioned people reading various verses and then giving either questionable or no interpretation. This means often orthodox beliefs and encouragements are shared, but with no ground in truth.

The result for me isn’t just that it doesn’t get my intellect going. The problem is that my heart isn’t very moved either. I really believe God is experienced as we see Him, His character, His actions, and His promises in His inspired Word. Without the Word permeating our testimonies and encouragements, I fear people will come and not experience the Living God but instead have interesting thoughts and feelings about a vague combination of nice attributes that cannot Save nor give life to the soul.

Speaking of this topic, here is something I think can be really helpful if you understand it.

New Guitar, Insights into life during Malaysia, Questioning Evangelism

a)
I wrote this in a draft a long time ago (like, November), but didn’t post it:

I got a new guitar (! Built-in pick-up, and its got a tiger-print going on haha. Pretty sweet, and it was less than 70 bucks Canadian. I named it Cyndi (not actually).

b)
Thoughts about Malaysia:

I) Yep, Lydia is right, Malaysian food is great. However…. I still think Chinese food is the best. Unlike what I said about the other foods, Malaysian food is Chinese-influenced, but manages to use it well. Good times.
II) Giraffes are sweet.
III) Monkeys are sweet.
IV) Rambo is awesome (he wasn’t in Malaysia, but I saw Rambo IV there)
V) Danny Sh***** is scared of snakes. (hahaha…. I just realized I can refer to him as Danny Sh**man, but I wasn’t sure if people would find that funny. Voice your disapproval, or that’s what I’m calling him in subsequent posts)

c)
Also wrote this a long time ago but didn’t post it:

This year my job is to do Evangelism. But what’s a real issue is that my heart is not as sensitive to God’s leading, or as full of compassion for the lost as it should be. So I definitely wanna learn more about evangelism and read encouraging and inspiring books about the topic.

So, I picked up Questioning Evangelism by Randy Newman. The guy’s a cru staff down in the States. It’s not my favourite book of all time, but it’s pretty easy to read and helpful. The big idea is that often what’s more effective in Evangelism is not what you say, but the questions you ask that get them thinking. I definitely wanna apply it to my personal witnessing.

Here’s a taste:

“You Christians drive me crazy.. you Christians just believe everything you read in the Bible with blind faith… I read this book by this guy who’s done a whole bunch of research on this. It wasn’t the Red Sea. It was the Reed Sea. The Reed Sea is only a few inches deep, and they could have waded through it without any miracle-of-God stuff.”

…

“So how would you translate Yam Suph?”

“Huh?”

“How do you translate that Hebrew phrase that most Hebrew scholars translate the ‘Red Sea’? I assume you’ve looked into this”

“Well, I just read the book.”

“Do you remember who wrote the book?”

“No”

“Do you remember what his credentials are?”

“No.”

“Well, something must have convinced you that this guy knew Hebrew better than the Christian and Jewish scholars who translate the phrase ‘Red Sea’. Something must have convinced you that he knew Hebrew well enough to think that Yam Suph referred to the Reed Sea instead of the Red Sea. What was it?”

…

“I don’t know?”

“You mean that you just believed what this guy wrote with blind faith?”

(116-118)

Haha.. So, I’d recommend the book. There’s a really good chapter on marriage (how to answer the question “What’s so great about Marriage?” with more questions) and lots of good food for thought. And although I gave you a pretty sarcastic excerpt, its quite sensitive and compassionate.

Thai Food and Piper on the issue of MEN

Thai Food, and Piper on Men

a)

There was one brother that I got to spend a lot of time with during my travelling, God bless him, who had a big problem with eating. While we were in Thailand, he refused to eat western food, cause he thinks “I’m in Thailand, so I should devote my time here to getting to know Thai food”.

Although that seems like a good principle, as you examine the situation further, you encounter some problems:

I) Thailand has more western food than my current location, so I should have tried to take advantage of that.

II) In the area we were in, variety in Thai food was limited

III) Thai food is not that great

Although I have yet to experience all the cultures of the world, I think I can say with some certainty that Chinese food is the best Asian food. Often, other Asian foods just taste like someone tried to make Chinese food, but screwed up. There are good other Asian foods (Korean BBQ, Sushi), but Chinese food still rules.

b)

Sometimes, I’ll see stuff or read something and make a note to blog about it. Then months go by, and I have yet to blog about it. Here is an example:

A few months ago, I (as I usually do) went onto Piper’s website and saw a new audio resource:

Men!

Piper!!

Free!!!

You could imagine that I almost cried with excitement. With great delight, I downloaded this gem and with further delight, discovered that it was actually pretty good. Here’s an excerpt:

(speaking of a Church with a Biblical understanding of gender) The theology and the church and the mission are marked by over-arching male leadership and an ethos of tender-hearted strength and contrite courage and risk-taking decisiveness and readiness to sacrifice to protect and provide for the community—the feel of a great, majestic God making the men lovingly strong and the women intelligently secure.

In this ethos…

1. Men are freed to have feminine traits without being effeminate and women are freed to have masculine traits without being tomboys. (The most admirable women have masculine traits and the most admirable men have feminine traits: Lopsided masculinity and femininity are not as admirable.)

Back when I was at school, I remember talking to a good friend of mine and he was saying that someone in his small group got pretty discouraged reading these Christian man books (since a bunch of them came out recently) like Wild at Heart because he felt like his masculinity was threatened. He felt like the books made it seem like if you’re a real, Biblical man, you should be some kind of Rambo/Braveheart/Danny Sh*****-type guy, enjoying NFL, mountain-climbing, pick-up trucks, and beer. Our friend didn’t think he fit that kinda mold, and wondered if that meant he wasn’t a “man”.

Well, what if you’re not that kinda guy? I know it might surprise you, but I’m not that kinda guy either, despite what you may have guessed based on my physique (refer to profile pic). What determines if I’m a man or… less than a man?

I thought what Piper wrote was pretty Biblical and insightful. The Bible doesn’t list have a list that says “Things that you gotta do if you’re a man and you don’t wanna look gay”. It instead says “stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong” (1 Cor. 16:13). Being a man is about strength in the faith and in the home. It’s about moral and Spiritual courage and conviction that translates into Spiritual and household leadership. But what that looks like is gonna be different depending on personality and culture.

There are some character traits that are more masculine and some that are more feminine, but to be a man does not mean having all of A and lacking all of B. That is not what a man should worry about.

It is not spending a lot of time on your hair, or enjoying figure skating, or listening to Coldplay that makes a man effeminate (though I still strongly suggest you avoid the latter). It is the cowardly abdication of responsibility in the home and in the Church that marks him who fails to undertake the Biblical role of manhood. That is what a man should worry about.

If this is true, guys have a lot of freedom in this area. Mark Driscoll says (paraphrasing) “most guys in our culture end up being gay or end up being bullies, cause they don’t wanna be gay”. We can be free from both, because we know manhood is different than womanhood, and we know that it’s about strong, loving, leadership in the family and in the Church, not about conforming to a list of character traits.

She-males, Bored at Church?, Controversial Words about Women

a)

Went to Bangkok, and saw lots of she-males. I was very unhappy about this.

But of course, being the idiot that I am, my only reaction was “ughh-ahhh-uhhhh….. wwwwhyyyyyyy????”. I was more upset that I had to witness such grossness, that I hardly thought of the painfulness of their lives (though, it was real gross. Ughhhh-ahhh-uhhhhhhh!!!!!).

But I didn’t really care. Did they have parents who loved them and sought their best interest? Did they have role-models that gave good examples of what it means to be men and women (though it’s sad that most of North America lacks this)? Did they realize they don’t need to do this to have a sense of identity and meaning? Did they ever hear the Gospel? Is there anyone to come and bring them hope? Or do most people just walk by them (like me) and think “that’s real gross, get me outta here”?

If only I had a softer heart.

b)

“A faithful congregation will draw faithful preaching out of their pastor. Conversely, it is very hard to persevere as a faithful teacher of the Word of God to a congregation that does not want to have it taught to them. To some extent, congregations get the preachers they deserve, because preaching is a two-way process. The attitudes of the preacher and the congregation must unite in a humble hunger for God’s Word.” – Mark Ashton

Amen.

c)

This is at least very thought-provoking:

http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=917

Wanna taste? Read this:

“It is not fashionable these days to suggest that women don't belong in or near combat -- or that children need their mothers… Why the West has seen it necessary to diminish motherhood so that women can pretend to be men remains a mystery to sane adults. It should be unnecessary to say that the military is not a proper vehicle for social experimentation but is a machine dedicated to fighting and, if necessary, killing.” – Kathleen Parker, Washington Post

I’m not commenting right now, but I would like people’s opinions. Is this controversial? Or is this what most of my friends think? I do not know.

(I apologize that I comment on such old news. I actually planned on posting this months ago, haha)