brettmaxwell.com

2008-05-12T23:11:00.001-04:00

"She's going to heaven, but I don't want to talk to her until then" -Sean

friday photo

2008-05-09T23:28:00.004-04:00

The nights aren't warm yet, but the days are. You appreciate spring so much more when you live in Michigan. Climbing season is here:

[friday photo on flickr]

ignorance is bliss

2008-05-09T20:10:00.000-04:00

I read a lot from people who believe very differently than myself. I've read a lot from the "new atheists" and other, less aggressive, atheists and agnostics. Some, such as Bart Ehrman, even have a Christian background and educational pursuits similar to my own but have come to reject the Christian God. I just started Ehrman's 2005 book Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. I caught myself thinking once again about an uncomfortable issue for me, and this time reflected on it a bit longer.

This man is challenging my worldview, my perception of truth, and ultimately everything I hold dear and valuable. Based on the fact that this book was NYT best-selling, I also assume he argues his case convincingly and see this even in the intro and first chapter. So the question haunts in my mind, begging to be made conscious, "Do I really want to read this? What if it convinces me?" If I were to walk away from the faith, as Ehrman has done, it would mean I have been completely wasting the last quarter of my life. As Paul said, If I am wrong about this Jesus thing I am of all men most to be pitied.

"You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!"

If I was wrong, would I really want to know? I reluctantly admit there is a small part of me that wouldn't, but ultimately I am convinced I would want to know.

So then how does a Christian go about reading challenging books? Very carefully. Books from guys like Ehrman, Dawkins, Harris, etc (as well as most documentaries) are designed to appeal strongly to emotions as well as reason, and though I won't harshly critique them for this since many Christian books do the same, it does necessitate careful reading. Also, as with any important issue, we must listen to both sides. Some may read Ehrman's book and walk away from the faith, but have they read Ben Witherington's review? or the response of the book Misquotes in Misquoting Jesus?(The same kind of responses have been given to Dawkins and Harris). or NT Wright's beast of a book The Resurrection of the Son of God?

I just keep coming back to 1 Corinthians 15 where Paul says "if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain." and "If the dead are not raised, LET US EAT AND DRINK, FOR TOMORROW WE DIE." If my faith was in vain I would want to know because I would do a lot more eating, drinking, and dieing.

footnotes > endnotes

2008-05-05T17:48:00.001-04:00

Endnotes cause me much unnecessary page turning. Footnotes are my friend.

friday photo

2008-05-02T19:19:00.003-04:00

Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted a Friday Photo...

These are my friends Justin and Kevin (Justin in the foreground). I'm sure this could be interpreted with all kinds of symbolism, but I just thought it was "neat":

bacon

2008-05-02T09:13:00.001-04:00

xkcd is a funny web comic:

sometimes i don't like christians either

2008-05-01T09:52:00.004-04:00

Lifeway has some new statistics gathered from un-churched people. Many of them are interesting, but this one stood out in particular and I think I would lump myself with the 32%:

Some of the other interesting findings:

48% believe "There exists only one God, the God of the Bible."
61% believe "The God of the Bible is no different from the gods or spiritual beings depicted by world religions such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc."
79% believe "Christianity today is more about organized religion than about loving God and loving people"
"78 percent of those surveyed said they would be willing to listen to someone who wanted to talk about their Christian beliefs. The number rose to 89 percent among adults 18-29 years of age."

theodicy

2008-04-30T12:37:00.010-04:00

the·od·i·cy –noun, plural -cies.
a vindication of the divine attributes, particularly holiness and justice, in establishing or allowing the existence of physical and moral evil.

Meet NT Wright, he is the Anglican Bishop of Durham who has published several dozen books of various scholarly to popular levels. One of his books has the self-explanatory title: Evil And the Justice of God

Now meet Bart Ehrman, he is the chair of the religious studies department at UNC- Chapel Hill, a New Testament scholar and textual critic, and recent convert to agnosticism. He also has a book with a self-explanatory title: God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer

Now get this, they recently had an organized blog debate on this topic. Check it out in order:

Bart Ehrman: How the Problem of Pain Ruined My Faith
N.T. Wright: God's Plan to Rescue Us
Bart Ehrman: What About the Actual Suffering?
N.T. Wright: What it Looks Like When God Runs the World
Bart Ehrman: God's Kingdom Has Not Come
N.T. Wright: The Bible Does Answer the Problem--Here's How

(anyone notice they both have books as the background of their head shot?)

sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll

2008-04-28T11:07:00.003-04:00

Abraham Piper (son of John) has a newish blog called 22 Words which has every post at that length. As someone that works with the high schoolers at Riv, I think this is a great one:

Understanding teenage rebellion only as sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll implies that the goal is celibacy, sobriety, and employment. It’s not.

It’s Jesus.

about time

2008-04-23T17:53:00.004-04:00

Michigan Brewing Company is opening a second, smaller brewpub in downtown Lansing just a 1 mile straight-shot from my house. Happy days. Hopefully they'll brew special small-batch releases there.

sick

2008-04-17T11:07:00.003-04:00

This news story literally made me sick to my stomach. An exercise in logical conclusions, if you ask me, much like this one equally as disgusting.

big bang theology

2008-04-13T11:15:00.002-04:00

Pertaining to the question what came before the big bang?, agnostic astrophysicist Robert Jastrow concluded his book:

"At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

[as quoted in Francis Collins' The Language of God]

atheist stats

2008-04-07T15:59:00.002-04:00

[link]

I've previously hypothesized about the correlation of education to atheism.

how to disagree

2008-04-07T15:16:00.003-04:00

"The web is turning writing into a conversation. Twenty years ago, writers wrote and readers read. The web lets readers respond, and increasingly they do—in comment threads, on forums, and in their own blog posts.

Many who respond to something disagree with it. That's to be expected.

...

If we're all going to be disagreeing more, we should be careful to do it well. What does it mean to disagree well? Most readers can tell the difference between mere name-calling and a carefully reasoned refutation, but I think it would help to put names on the intermediate stages. So here's an attempt at a disagreement hierarchy: [Continue reading]"
-Paul Graham

The Reason For God, Chapter 3

2008-04-06T17:12:00.004-04:00

Explore and buy
Previously

Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2

Part 1: The Leap of Doubt
Chapter 3: Christianity Is a Straitjacket

In this chapter Keller takes on the charge that Christianity is limiting of freedom and therefore divisive. First, freedom is explained to mean (in our culture) that people are free to create their own meaning and purpose. This postmodern view is then set aside for a modern view that meaning and purpose may be broader in scope, or even universal. Regarding divisiveness, Keller objects that any community is inherently divisive simply because it is defined, but a better question of freedom is which communities are most accepting of other communities. The breadth of Christian freedom is then described in several examples of the Christian faith living in many different cultures while leaving much of the culture and all the primary tenets of the faith intact. Keller's final appeal to Christian freedom is to address the restraints that must exist for any freedom to flourish and uses love as a primary example of sacrifice and restraint living peaceably with joy and freedom.

Quotes

If you say all truth-claims are power plays, then so is your statement. If you say (like Freud) that all truth-claims about religion and God are just psychological projections to deal with your guilt and insecurity, then so is your statement. To see through everything is not to see.

Liberal democracy is based on an extensive list of assumptions- a preference of individual to community rights, a division between private and public morality, and the sanctity of personal choice. All of these beliefs are foreign to many other cultures.

Any community that did not hold its members accountable for specific beliefs and practices would have no corporate identity and would not really be a community at all.

In many areas of life, freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones, the liberating restrictions. Those that fit with the reality of our nature and the world produce greater power and scope for our abilities and a deeper joy and fulfillment.

What is the environment that liberates us if we confine ourselves to it, like water liberates the fish? Love. Love is the most liberating freedom-loss of all.

You cannot enter a deep relationship and still make unilateral decisions or allow your friend or lover no say in how you live your life. To experience the joy and freedom of love, you must give up your personal autonomy.

In the most profound way, God has said to us, in Christ, "I will adjust to you. I will change for you. I'll serve you though it means a sacrifice for me." If he has done this for us, we can and should say the same to God and others. St. Paul writes, "the love of Christ contrains us" (2 Corinthians 5:14).

Part 1: The Leap of Doubt
Chapter 4: The Church Is Responsible for So Much Injustice

The Reason For God, Chapter 2

2008-04-06T16:44:00.006-04:00

Explore and buy
Previously

Introduction
Chapter 1

Part 1: The Leap of Doubt
Chapter 2: How Could a Good God Allow Suffering?

Whether logical or emotional, one of the greatest objections to the God of the Bible is the apparent contradiction of an all-loving, all-powerful God who yet allows suffering. Keller begins by briefly putting away the logical argument by explaining that God may simply and validly have good reasons beyond our comprehension and that a secular worldview fails even more because no evil may actually be attributed to disaster and human suffering. Keller moves on to the emotional aspect by first relating that God clearly does care about suffering; so much that he came in the person of Jesus to participate in it. Finally, Keller admits that he hasn't provided a thorough answer for suffering, but points out the unique Christian position for the resolution of suffering in resurrection and he speculates that perhaps current suffering will serve to make that future glory even more full.

Quotes

Tucked away within the assertion that the world is filled with pointless evil is a hidden premise, namely, that if evil appears pointless to me, then it must be pointless... If our minds can't plumb the depths of the universe for good answers to suffering, well, then, there can't be any! This is blind faith of a high order.

With time and perspective most of us can see good reasons for at least some of the tragedy and pain that occurs in life. Why couldn't it be possible that, from God's vantage point, there are good reasons for all of them? If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn't stopped evil and suffering in the world, then you have (at the same moment) a God great and transcendent enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue that you can't know. Indeed, you can't have it both ways.

C.S. Lewis described how he had originally rejected the idea of God because of the cruelty of life. Then he came to realize that evil was even more problematic for his atheism. In the end, he realized that suffering provided a better argument for God's existence than one against it.

The evolutionary mechanism of natural selection depends on death, destruction, and violence of the strong against the weak- these things are all perfectly natural. On what basis, then, does the atheist judge the natural world to be horribly wrong, unfair, and unust?

"All this philosophizing does not get the Christian God 'off the hook' for the wold's evil and suffering!" In response the philosopher Peter Kreeft points out that the Christian God came to earth to deliberately put himself on the hook of human suffering.

The Bible says that Jesus came on a rescue mission for creation. He had to pay for our sins so that someday he can end evil and suffering without ending us.

We look at the cross of Jesus, we still do not know what the answer is. However, we now know what the answer isn't. It can't be that he doesn't love us.

Everything sad is going to come untrue and it will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost.

Part 1: The Leap of Doubt
Chapter 3: Christianity Is a Straitjacket

The Reason For God, Chapter 1

2008-04-06T15:27:00.006-04:00

Explore and buy
Previously

Introduction

Part 1: The Leap of Doubt
Chapter 1: There Can't Be Just One True Religion

Keller sees the world providing three fatally flawed solutions to the exclusive claims of multiple religions. First, that religion should be outlawed, collapses because of the time-proven fact that illegality does not stop the flourishing of religion. Second, condemning religion, ultimately fails because it is a universal and exclusive truth claim of the same manner for which religions are being scrutinized. Third, privatizing religious beliefs, fails because it is impossible for anyone to approach public discourse of moral issues without presuppositions. Finally, Keller points out that Christianity may not produce the most moral people, but it should produce the most tolerant.

Quotes

I was once invited to be the Christian representative in a panel discussion at a local college along with a Jewish rabbi and a Muslim imam... We all agreed on the statement: "If Christians are right about Jesus being God, then Muslims and Jews fail in a serious way to love God as God really is, but if Muslims and Jews are right that Jesus is not God but rather a teacher or prophet, then Christians fail in a serious way to love God as God really is."

Ironically, the insistence that doctrines do not matter is really a doctrine itself.

Berger goes on, however, to point out that absolute relativism can only exist if the relativists exempt themselves from their own razor.

You can't say, "All claims about religions are historically conditioned except the one I am making right now."

She takes as an article of faith that people are more valuable than rocks or trees- though she can't prove such a belief scientifically.

Ironically, insisting that religious reasoning be excluded from the public square is itself a controversial "sectarian" point of view.

Part 1: The Leap of Doubt
Chapter 2: How Could a Good God Allow Suffering?

delicious

2008-04-05T01:55:00.009-04:00

The beer dinner was tonight and went incredibly well. The food and beer were everything I expected (amazing!) and I was surprised by just how well some of the items paired together. There's simply no way we could have done it without our chefs Kevin and Sarah Stacey, major thanks to them.

We shall do it again, stay tuned.

[pics]

Update: Check out Nate's pictures at Flickr

beer news

2008-04-03T22:03:00.003-04:00

The beer dinner is tomorrow. I'm excited!! We sold out in about a week with very little effort. We are hoping to do this a few times a year and with more seats available.

In related news, Forbes reports new studies showing (yet again) that regularly consuming beer in moderation is significantly healthier than both abuse and abstention:

Earlier this month researchers at the National Institutes of Health released a study showing that frequent drinking in moderation may protect men from death due to cardiovascular disease. Men who reported drinking 120 to 365 days a year had a 20% lower cardiovascular death rate than those who drank one to 36 days a year. Overdoing it, however, can have the opposite effect. Men who knocked back five or more drinks when they did indulge had a 30% greater risk for death via heart disease.

Also, Drew Goodmanson, a pastor in San Diego, has a new post about alcohol and the church. His closing remarks:

To move from a place of being a redemptive community to one governed by our own laws (not God's) produces a much more hidden and prevalent sin of self-righteousness and legalism. And sadly legalism is far more rampant in the church than alcoholism.

listening

2008-04-01T13:38:00.002-04:00

I read a blog post this morning on a slightly controversial issue of theology and one person posted a comment with a particularly graceful opposing view. This was his closing remark, which I think is worth repeating and praying for ourselves:

May God lead you and free you from all reactive readings of Scripture, all theological pre-suppositions, and all hipsters who sneer at those who view Scripture differently than “us” (whether they are stuck in modernism or Russian Orthodoxy). I have found my greatest theological insights by listening empathetically to people whose viewpoints troubled my own. May this blessing be yours as well.

thou shalt always kill

2008-03-29T14:49:00.001-04:00

Why do I like hip-hop so much more when it has a British accent?

[lyrics]

concert pics

2008-03-29T13:33:00.003-04:00

The concert was a blast and raised a bunch of money for a great cause. Slideshow:

[link]

concert Friday at Riv

2008-03-26T23:23:00.002-04:00

International Justice Mission (IJM) is an awesome organization that works around the world combating human trafficking and sex slavery. Friday night at Riverview the Michigan State IJM chapter is putting on a benefit concert to support this important work around the world. I helped pick the bands and do some other stuff for this and give my personal guarantee it will be a good time, and for a great cause. Be there.

Come on out to Riverview Church on March 28 for the IJM Battle of the Bands Concert! Tickets are $10 and the show will feature five area bands:

Januzzi Watchmen
Jet Boy Blue
Passion/Aggression
Come Find the Lion
The Vestige

The winner of the 'battle' will be based on audience votes that can be obtained and cast by purchasing a ticket to get into the show. Proceeds made through ticket sales will then be donated to the International Justice Mission to help them continue their work ending modern day slavery, abuse, sexual exploitation, and oppression.

Tickets can be purchased by emailing ijmatmsu@gmail.com about the show or can also be purchased at the door, the night of the show. Doors will open at 6:30 and the show starts at 7, so invite your friends, family, and everyone you know to come on out for a great time and a chance to support a worthy cause on March 28! We hope to see you there!

[facebook event page]

easter

2008-03-24T21:13:00.006-04:00

I thought it appropriate timing to begin reading NT Wright's book "The Resurrection of the Son of God" on Good Friday. I'm only 20 pages in (out of over 800!) but I felt smarter after reading just his very detailed Contents page, which is actually 7 pages! Most of the book is online, just go look at the Contents and be reassured of all the reasons we have to believe Jesus really did rise from the dead.

This is important stuff to know about, because as Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15;

"If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied."

and

"If the dead are not raised, LET US EAT AND DRINK, FOR TOMORROW WE DIE."

Great Easter services at Riv this weekend and lunch w/ the Heikkinens [pics].

tempting?

2008-03-22T18:13:00.001-04:00

[link]