The Internet Monk Archives

Mondays with Michael Spencer: May 30, 2016

Mondays with Michael Spencer: May 30, 2016

Today we continue a series of Monday posts with excerpts of Michael Spencer’s thoughts about the Bible and what it does and does not promise to do for us.

• • •

I don’t believe in inerrancy, a view of how scripture is inspired that means well, but just can’t get traction with me.

My problems with inerrancy have been going on for a very long time, and I’ve heard it presented and taught by the best. It’s never sat well with me, probably because I have a lot of literary interest in the text of scripture, plus I don’t like to be bullied. I get a rash.

1. What the heck is it? It takes a major document to describe inerrancy.

2. The document in question contains the following paragraph (Chicago Statement on Inerrancy XIII):

We deny that it is proper to evaluate Scripture according to standards of truth and error that are alien to its usage or purpose. We further deny that inerrancy is negated by Biblical phenomena such as a lack of modern technical precision, irregularities of grammar or spelling, observational descriptions of nature, the reporting of falsehoods, the use of hyperbole and round numbers, the topical arrangement of material, variant selections of material in parallel accounts, or the use of free citations

Excuse me, but did I just read that I am off the inerrancy hook if I can assert that the passage in question did not intend to come up to a particular standard of truth?

OK….I don’t believe the Bible was ever intended to be true in comparison to contemporary science, history, astronomy, geology, medicine, anatomy, psychology or the Bill James Baseball Abstract. Can I go to lunch now?

3. Inerrancy is asserted for the original autographs.

We don’t have them.

4. While the Bible is supposedly inerrant, none of those who interpret it are inerrant interpreters. That’s a problem. If there is a perfect compass, and you give it to a chimp, what have you got? A chimp with a compass.

5. Inerrancy is almost always tied up with things that really bother me: Young earth creationism, of course. Spiritual warfarism, where people with problem kids and screwed up marriages thing that Satan is in the house and/or in their head. Secret knowledge schemes, like What did Jesus eat? Diets. Conspiracy theories. Bible only Christian education. Lunacy like the Bible Codes. It goes on and on. Magic Bookies run amuck.

6. Inerrancy looks, smells and feels remarkably like a philosophical imposition on the Bible, going beyond what the Bible CAN say about itself, and forcing those of us who believe in the authority and truthfulness of the Bible to take a “loyalty oath” that goes beyond what should be said. Typical of evangelical attempts to show they are really really really really really right. Catholics do it with the Pope. Pentecostals with experience. Evangelicals with inerrancy.

It’s like a philosophical security system to keep everything safe. It’s been called Protestant Scholasticism, and I agree.

7. No major confession requires that you use the word “inerrancy”. Even the Southern Baptist Convention’s Faith and Message Statement avoids the exact word, and doesn’t harp on the concept. Reformation confessions don’t use it at all. We can live without it. Consider what BHT commenter Myron Marston says on the subject:

I’ve got news for you….but the Bible may be wrong on the resurrection. It may be wrong on lots of things. I don’t really have any way to inerrantly prove it one way or the other. And neither do you. At some point, you’ve got to accept it on faith, as do I. Accepting or not accepting the idea of inerrancy has little to do with whether or not I place my faith in Christ. In fact, I think inerrancy has a tendency to get in the way of our trusting Christ. We spend so much time sweating all these little inerrant details and trying to scientifically/historically “prove” the Bible that we can miss out on the entire point of the whole thing: Christ. Isn’t Christ enough? Why does it have to be Christ and inerrancy? Call me crazy, but I’m THANKFUL that the Bible doesn’t line up factually or theologically 100%. It would make it too easy to “stand pat” with my current understanding rather than having to spend a lifetime wrestling with scripture.

I could expand this list but I won’t. I want to say something about the comments quoted at the beginning of the post.

Defenders of inerrancy send me lots of false dilemmas. Thing like: If we don’t believe in inerrancy, the Bible must go out the window. Shred it. Go ahead. Shred Grandma’s KJV because you don’t believe in inerrancy so YOU JUST DON’T BELIEVE THE BIBLE ANY MORE YOU OVER-EDUCATED KNOW IT ALL.

Or this one. If you don’t buy the six day, young earth creationist view of Genesis, then you are saying it’s all an allegory. And that’s stupid. So it’s literal history with Ken Hamm or it’s allegories with all the devils of hell.

That’s it? Those are my choices? Ken Hamm or “allegory?” The great thing about that one is I’m pretty sure the author doesn’t know what an allegory is.

Or the Bible is a perfect compass. Or a perfect map. Or a perfect book. Because God is perfect. And if God said it, it must be perfect. It’s perfect. Really, really really perfect. Not just true. Not just a book that brings us Christ and the Gospel. Perfect. And if you don’t come out and walk around saying the Bible is perfect, then you reject the Bible.

And of course, without inerrancy, we lose history, and we lose the resurrection, and we lose the Gospel. The only way we know that the Gospels are telling the truth is the doctrine of inerrancy, modern version. Without it, we float off on a cloud of mythology. Or so I keep hearing. Why this doesn’t seem to be applying to N.T. Wright hasn’t been explained.

You will have to forgive me, readers, but this all just amazes me. I mean, it really amazes me, because it simply isn’t so.

The Bible is, first of all, not a book at all. It is 66 books, from a very long time ago. A wide selection of literature in the human conversation. The church selected these books because it believes that God speaks through those books to tell us the truth of the Gospel, and to tell us about Jesus and our salvation by the mediator. Therefore, the church asserts that these 66 books are a message from God. Since the Bible doesn’t know the “Christian Bible as canon” exists, it doesn’t have a word for itself beyond the New Testament calling the Old “scripture.”

Confessions like the WCF do a good job of saying God revealed himself, the church wrote down not only what was revealed about the Gospel, but a lot of other things surrounding the Gospel that make it understandable. The church selected a canon, and the church endorses that canon as scripture. God didn’t pick these books. We did. Christians will discover, on their own, that the Spirit speaks through those books and brings us to a saving knowledge of Jesus. They do a good job of this without talking about science, anthropology, anatomy, the latest issue of Biblical Archeology or any other standard of modern “truth.” The Bible is historical, but nowhere do I read a claim that it is perfect history. It’s “here’s the story from the God-point of view, where all kinds of strange things are more important than what you learned in school.”

The Bible is truthful, but it’s approach to truth is clearly something like this: God told us the truth in Jesus. Believe him. The Biblical story leading us to Jesus is true in that it leads us to Jesus. This seems to work without reference to large epistemological tomes on the nature of truth or the real “facts” of science. It’s actually quite amazing.

Pic & Poem of the Week: May 29, 2016

Waters of Lake Sunapee — Bubbling waters near the shore of Lake Sunapee

Pic & Poem of the Week
May 29, 2016

For your pleasure and contemplation, I am posting an original photograph and a corresponding poem each week on Sundays. May these offerings help lead us to a deeper place of rest on the Lord’s Day.

Click on the picture for a larger image.

• • •

The Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

by Wendell Berry
from Standing by Words: Essays

Saturday Ramblings: May 28, 2016 – Race Version

Ain’t no ramblin’ Rambler today, friends. This is Race Weekend here in Indy, and a special one at that. This Memorial Day Sunday will mark the 100th running of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing, the Indianapolis 500.

Your chaplain won’t be going anywhere near 16th and Georgetown tomorrow, however. Officials announced the first sellout in the history of the Indianapolis 500 Mile Race, which means that an estimated 350,000 people will crowd into the track on the west side of the city to watch the race and participate in the general revelry. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway does not release official attendance numbers, but it is said that the Indy 500 is the largest single-day sporting event on the planet. And this year, for the 100th race, all kinds of records are being set.

Let’s get a bit of historical perspective: when the first 500 Mile Race was run:

A first-class stamp cost 2 cents
A Hershey chocolate bar cost 2 cents
A bottle of Coca-Cola cost 5 cents
A gallon of gas cost 6 cents
A box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes went for under 10 cents
The average cost of a new car was $1,280, and a new home, $2,650

And, oh yeah, Wrigley Field would open in 2 years, and the Cubs hadn’t won a World Series for 3 years (I’m still waiting).

Should be wild around here for the next couple of days. Here are some links for those of you who would like to learn more about this racing institution, celebrating 100 years this weekend.

It’s a great weekend to live in Indy! So, come on everybody, start your engines, and let’s ramble at 225 mph today!

Is Hillary in big trouble?

The former First Lady and current presidential candidate found the temperature rising with regard to her email controversy. CNN reports:

While an FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server continues, the State Department’s Office of Inspector General has raised the stakes with the release of a remarkable report finding that Clinton’s actions violated State Department policies and were inconsistent with federal record-keeping laws.

…the inspector general directly contradicts Clinton’s repeated assertions that she complied both with federal law and State Department policies. “At a minimum,” the report finds, “Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with Department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act.”

Clinton’s defense has basically been, “Others did it too!” which sounds kind of like my kids when they were seven years old. I didn’t buy it then — will the public buy it now? The report does point out that Colin Powell also used private email and failed to protect correspondence, but is that going to be enough to protect Ms. Clinton?

Despite the inspector general’s report, criminal charges against Clinton remain highly unlikely. While the report provides previously nonpublic information relevant to Clinton’s motivations, the available public evidence remains insufficient to illustrate two facts needed for a criminal charge — that she knew that emails on her private server were classified and that she intentionally mishandled classified information.

No doubt this will constitute a major theme of discussion for some time in the run-up to the election.

President Obama became the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima this week.

Have you ever wondered how the U.S. military decided that Hiroshima was the city on which to unleash the atomic bomb? A fascinating article by Paul Ham at The Atlantic tells us.

A group in Los Alamos, New Mexico gathered in May, 1945 to discuss options. They were known as the Target Group, and this was the question before them: Which of the preserved Japanese cities would best demonstrate the destructive power of the atomic bomb?

General Leslie Groves, the Army engineer in charge of the Manhattan Project, had been ruminating on targets since late 1944; at a preliminary meeting two weeks earlier, he had laid down his criteria. The target should: possess sentimental value to the Japanese so its destruction would “adversely affect” the will of the people to continue the war; have some military significance—munitions factories, troop concentrations, and so on; be mostly intact, to demonstrate the awesome destructive power of an atomic bomb; and be big enough for a weapon of the atomic bomb’s magnitude.

Tokyo, Ham reports, had been eliminated from consideration because it had already been devastated and was in a state of rubble. The group narrowed down their choices to four: Kyoto, Hiroshima, Yokohama, and Kokura. As they considered Hiroshima, they observed that it

…was “an important army depot and port of embarkation,” …situated in the middle of an urban area “of such a size that a large part of the city could be extensively damaged.” Hiroshima, the biggest of the “unattacked” targets, was surrounded by hills that were “likely to produce a focusing effect which would considerably increase the blast damage.” On top of this, the Ota River made it “not a good” incendiary target, raising the likelihood of its preservation for the atomic bomb. Hiroshima met the criteria — “a large urban center, the psychological impact of which should be “spectacular” to ensure “international recognition” of the new weapon.”

Ham’s article painstakingly describes the process as the discussion went through several committees. In one of his most troubling paragraphs, he writes

…not one of the committee men raised the ethical, moral, or religious case against the use of an atomic bomb without warning on an undefended city. The businesslike tone, the strict adherence to form, the cool pragmatism, did not admit humanitarian arguments, however vibrantly they lived in the minds and diaries of several of the men present.

The debate continued until it was finally decided that Hiroshima would be the site. Weather forecasts promised clear weather for August 6, 1945.

It is graduation season of course, and time for loads of boring speeches.

However, one of the better endings to a speech came from Hank Azaria, as he congratulated the students at Tufts University using his Simpsons’ voices.

The newest Rapture theory…

…comes from Anne Graham Lotz, the daughter of famous evangelist Billy Graham.

Lotz, who has previously said that she believes the Rapture will occur during her lifetime, reasoned that the fact that her father is still alive might have something to do with the return of Christ.

“I thought it had to do with the Return of Jesus and I won’t go there right now, but I wonder also if [my father] is here … to be an encouragement to you — that there is a man that is still faithful, still has a heart for the Gospel, heart for God, heart for the lost and still prays,” she continued. “In fact, he prays in his preaching voice. He is still kicking. Maybe that will encourage you to be faithful through persevering in the ministry to which God has called you.”

In an interview with The Christian Post following her speech, Lotz clarified what she meant when she said her father’s aliveness could possibly have something to do with the coming of Christ.

“My father’s life is very unique. His life in ministry will never be equalled. The fact that he is still on this planet at 97 years of age, that is not an accident,” she explained. “God is not whimsical and he does everything intentionally. The fact that my father is still here, God is holding him for a reason.”

“One of the things that I thought possibly — only God would know — when my father goes to Heaven, one more time, the Gospel will be preached to the whole world,” Lotz continued.

She cited Matthew 24:14, which states: “And this Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”

“Every news outlet, I would think, they won’t be able to talk about Billy Graham without talking about the Gospel, I wouldn’t think unless they do contortions,” she stated. “So, maybe God is holding him for that particular moment in time, in timing for things that will happen at the very end of this age.”

In another prediction, Ms. Lotz said, “I believe America is in the last stage of this downward spiral into the abyss of God’s judgment.”

In a scintillating display of exegetical skill with Romans 1, she was somehow able to find how abandoning Creationism and embracing evolution leads to sexual immorality and ultimately judgment.

What is it with Billy Graham’s kids these days?

Now, who saw this coming?

Reports are that there is a new Republican Super PAC that is focusing on getting a specific population of previously untapped voters to vote for Donald Trump.

You guessed it. Let me introduce you to “Amish PAC” — “the first Super PAC dedicated to getting plain voters to the polls.”

Amish PAC’s co-founder, Ben Walters, said his group’s goal is to mobilize a previously untapped bloc of conservative voters for a general election fight against Hillary Clinton. The group is focused on the key swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, which are each home to about 60,000 Amish people.

…Walters said in an interview that he and others started Amish PAC to reach out to this culturally isolated community, basically because no one else had tried it yet.

“It became clear that Republicans were doing a bad job of reaching out to probably one of the most deeply conservative pockets of potential voters in the country,” he said.

Word also has it that Bernie Sanders is making a last minute push to get out the Zoroastrian vote in his efforts to surpass Hillary Clinton.

Let’s not forget the real reason for Memorial Day.

Chris McGonigal, the photo editor at Huffington Post, has put together a remarkable and moving series of photos to remind us of those whose service and sacrifice we recall this weekend. I hope you’ll follow the link and spend some time reflecting on the toll war takes, not only on the fallen we remember on Memorial Day, but also on those they leave behind.

May these pictures be constant reminders for us all to pray and work for peace.

Nathaniel Marley, 4, salutes the graves of service men and women as well as his grandpa as he is taught to pay respect and say thank you by his father, U.S. Army veteran Bruce Marley, of San Diego, not pictured, on a Memorial Day weekend at Rosecrans National Cemetery overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Point Loma, San Diego. (Photo by Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Finally, there’s only one song to play today. Two years ago, Jim Nabors sang his last rendition of “Back Home Again in Indiana” before joining with Mary Hulman George to say the iconic words, “Gentlemen, start your engines!”

Here it is, with wishes for a safe, happy, and reflective Memorial Day weekend.

Another Look: I can’t get no…

Dallas Willard once wrote:

“It is spiritually formative to be dissatisfied and unable to resolve it.”

Hmm. Read that again. Slowly. Again.

Now let’s talk.

My first thought is, I am not sure I have ever been anything other than “dissatisfied.” How about you? For people my age, dissatisfaction, restlessness, and ennui came as natural as breathing. Were these ingredients in the bottles our mothers fed us, we members of the Baby Boom generation? The Stones sang our generation’s chorus back in the early 1960’s — “I can’t get no… I can’t get no…” No satisfaction. The thought still reverberates within me some fifty years later.

Or maybe we were just self-absorbed and our prosperity gave us enough freedom to wallow in a kind of self-pity.

But realistically, could anyone with half a brain look back on the tumultuous twentieth century and not be dissatisfied? Those of us born in the post-war era wondered how in the hell the shallow peace and prosperity of suburbia (which we nevertheless enjoyed, by the way — we are hypocrites just like everyone else) could blind us to the record of interminable blood lust, injustice, and corruption that was presented as a “century of progress.” Idealists all, we could see through those who called us to settle for the kind of satisfaction you could buy in a store or receive from an “authority.” We wore our dissatisfaction as a badge of honor, a mark of authenticity. We knew how to get real, man.

On a personal level, as a sinner-saint, a Christian who views the cross and Jesus’ call to carry it seriously, I’ve never been “satisfied.” Instead, I feel a sense of wanderlust, a hunger, what I hope is a “holy” dissatisfaction, the stretching and discomfort of burgeoning life within. I’m not content to be where I am; I want to go forward, to “follow” in response to grace’s invitation and provision.

At some times, moreover, as an introvert and a pessimist prone to depression, my dissatisfaction is pervasive, touching the prosaic details of my utterly human life. I am not happy when I’m alone. I am not happy with my family. Food doesn’t satisfy. There’s nothing to watch on TV. I don’t feel like reading anything. Nothing sounds fun or inviting. I just don’t like life in those moments and I may or may not be able to tell you why. Those are the times when I’m glad Jesus loves unhappy grouches, but even that is not a thought that brings much relief or satisfaction.

I’m stuck in a querulous rut.

Most of my dissatisfaction is about me. I can’t stop “shoulding” on myself. I should lose weight. I should take more walks. I should use my time better. I should order my daily life and schedule more wisely. I should pay more attention to my wife. I should have a more disciplined prayer life. I should remember birthdays and anniversaries. I should eat healthier. I should clean up my clutter. The list is endless.

I should…

I envy those souls that seem to be content, their hearts and minds at rest, peacefully enjoying ordered lives. I have moments like that. Then my alarm goes off.

Some people just seem so damn responsible and fulfilled. They planned their lives, and somehow it’s working out. They built the nest egg, paid for the kids’ college, have the cabin at the lake or in the mountains, go away to the beach on Spring Break and come back all tanned, send out the glowing Christmas letter. They seem to have safely and successfully negotiated whatever minefields they faced with little trouble. Life is good.

It’s almost like they don’t even need Jesus. [Editor’s note: joke]

I can hear some of them saying, “Well of course we went through some tough times when we didn’t have much. But we worked hard and stuck to it and, with God’s help, it panned out.”

But it’s difficult for me to imagine any of them saying, “Yes, it’s good to be hungry. It’s good to be dissatisfied. It’s good to be at a place where you don’t have the answers, where you can’t solve your problems and satisfy the longing within.” Or if they do, they say it as a prelude to some subtle prosperity gospel message that proclaims (by faith) these negative experiences are good because they teach us to trust God, and when we do that, he blesses us.

On the other hand, when someone who is struggling with life says it’s good to be in the place of disorientation and dissatisfaction, it sounds like he is playing the victim card, like he’s making excuses for having little to show for the slipshod life he has lived, and claiming helplessness when it’s really just that he’s not willing to give proper attention and put forth the effort.

That’s the conservative, common-sense Midwest moralist in me speaking. That part of me continues to insist that everyone can and should seek satisfaction, that it is achievable, that we can do something to make it happen. Is not “the pursuit of happiness” in our very DNA?

But if you read Willard’s sentence again — “It is spiritually formative to be dissatisfied and unable to resolve it.” — you will find that he is suggesting something as countercultural as the wisdom of the Desert Fathers.

He is not saying dissatisfaction is a good place to be because of how it helps you in the long run, or because of the lessons you learn from it, or because God will use it to bring you to a better place. No, he is saying it’s good to be there and to stay there, being unable to figure it out or change it.

It’s not good to be in the darkness because it leads you to the light. It’s good to be in the dark. Period.

It’s not good to be in the wilderness because that’s how God leads you to the Promised Land. No, it’s just good to be in the wilderness! It’s good to make your bed on the desert sand night after night and wake up to the same old manna next day.

What forms us is not discovering the “answer.” What forms us is living wholly within the questions.

Qoheleth is a biblical character who gained wisdom by facing dissatisfaction and realizing he could not resolve it:

All things are wearisome;
more than one can express
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
or the ear filled with hearing.

• Ecclesiastes 1:8

But many Christians avoid Ecclesiastes, not grasping how important it is to stare life squarely in the face and see it as the transient puff of opaqueness it really is. Despite appearances, we cannot master or control it, and whatever “success” we experience (a blessing of God for which to be grateful, to be sure) is only temporary.

Regardless of how we live, we all end up six feet under and, within the relatively short span of a few generations, largely forgotten.

The work we do just gets passed on to others when we’re gone, and who knows what they will make of it?

None of us can ever truly see the “big picture” accurately and figure out “what it all means.” We may think there are transcendent reasons for the things that happen, but these are never clear to us and always subject to a variety of interpretations.

At some point, my friends, we have to trust.

“It is spiritually formative to be dissatisfied and unable to resolve it.” Not only does living in the questions and refusing to insist upon answers form us, it also gives us credibility among others who don’t share the faith. We don’t defend Jesus or improve his reputation with those around us by making air-tight arguments, but by showing them that a person can be okay in a wilderness without satisfaction. Trusting.

Peter Rollins once wrote:

In short, the emerging community must endeavor to be a question rather than an answer and an aroma rather than food. It must seek to offer an approach that enables the people of God to become the parable, aroma and salt of God in the world, helping to form a space where God can give of God. For too long the Church has been seen as an oasis in the desert — offering water to those who are thirsty. In contrast, the emerging community appears more as a desert in the oasis of life, offering silence, space and desolation amidst the sickly nourishment of Western capitalism. It is in this desert, as we wander together as nomads, that God is to be found. For it is here that we are nourished by our hunger.

•How (Not) to Speak of God

Perhaps the world we live in today calls for a new kind of desert monasticism, a society of holy fools who stand, not against the roiling world, but against a self-assured Church, not against doubt but against certainty, not against questions but against easy, quantifiable answers.

Perhaps this is about coming to a table empty-handed and waiting until someone puts bread and wine in your hand and says, “Take and eat.”

Perhaps this is about Jesus after all, and an open-ended call: “Follow me…”

Mike the Geologist: Science and the Bible (Lesson 6)

Surreal Landscape, Photo by KoolCats Photography

Science and the Bible – Lesson 6
By Michael McCann

In our last lesson we looked at some examples from geology that showed detailed, complex, coherent, and discoverable evidence that the earth is far older than a few thousand years. I could have multiplied similar examples all day long if necessary. Should you want to examine the geologic record in more detail I suggest this book. If the Grand Canyon piques your interest there is a new book out that details evidence for the age of the canyon and how it could not have been formed in one flood event.

One thing I did not do in the last lesson was specify how old the earth might be or how we could know that. It’s such an important topic that I did not want to shoehorn it into the last lesson. Of course I’m talking about radiometric dating. The discussion today will be taken from Radiometric Dating – A Christian Perspective by Dr. Roger C. Wiens (). It was written for Christian laymen by a Christian.

Radiometric dating (often called radioactive dating) is a technique used to date materials such as rocks, usually based on a comparison between the observed abundance of a naturally occurring radioactive isotope and its decay products, using known decay rates.

All ordinary matter is made up of combinations of chemical elements, each with its own atomic number, indicating the number of protons in the atomic nucleus. Additionally, elements may exist in different isotopes, with each isotope of an element differing in the number of neutrons in the nucleus. A particular isotope of a particular element is called a nuclide. Some nuclides are inherently unstable. That is, at some point in time, an atom of such a nuclide will spontaneously transform into a different nuclide. This transformation may be accomplished in a number of different ways, including radioactive decay, either by emission of particles (usually electrons (beta decay), positrons or alpha particles) or by spontaneous fission, and electron capture.

Atoms of a radioactive nuclide decays exponentially at a rate described by a parameter known as the half-life, usually given in units of years when discussing dating techniques. After one half-life has elapsed, one half of the atoms of the nuclide in question will have decayed into a “daughter” nuclide or decay product.

The mathematical expression that relates radioactive decay to geologic time, is:

D = D₀ + N(t) (e^λt − 1)

Where:

t is age of the sample,

D is number of atoms of the daughter isotope in the sample,

D₀ is number of atoms of the daughter isotope in the original composition,

N is number of atoms of the parent isotope in the sample at time t (the present), given by N(t) = N₀e^-λt, and

λ is the decay constant of the parent isotope, equal to the inverse of the radioactive half-life of the parent isotope times the natural logarithm of 2.

Now don’t worry if you don’t follow the math above. My reason for giving it is (1) to be precise and complete and (2) to show you that the math is in fact simple algebra. As long as a lab can analyze the amount of parent isotope and daughter isotope, the amount of original daughter isotope can be calculated and the age of the rock from when it cooled from the last time it was molten can be calculated. It really is just simple physics and math.

Let’s give an example from Wiens. Let’s say we are going to date a rock using the Rubidium-Strontium method. Rubidium-87 decays to strontium-87 with a half-life of 48.8 million years; so it is a good method to date older rocks.

From Figure 4 of Weins. A rubidium-strontium three-isotope plot. When a rock cools, all its minerals have the same ratio of strontium-87 to strontium-86, though they have varying amounts of rubidium. As the rock ages, the rubidium decreases by changing to strontium-87, as shown by the dotted arrows. Minerals with more rubidium gain more strontium-87, while those with less rubidium do not change as much.

Note that in this example at least 5 different minerals that compose the one rock are checked. The geologist doesn’t just “date” the rock. Notice that at any given time, the minerals all line up–a check to ensure that the system has not been disturbed. This is called an isochron. If the minerals don’t line up then something is wrong and the particular rock is NOT used to assign a date.

From Figure 5 of Weins. The original amount of the daughter strontium-87 can be precisely determined from the present-day composition by extending the line through the data points back to rubidium-87 = 0. This works because if there were no rubidium-87 in the sample, the strontium composition would not change. The slope of the line is used to determine the age of the sample. As Weins puts it:

As the rock starts to age, rubidium gets converted to strontium. The amount of strontium added to each mineral is proportional to the amount of rubidium present. This change is shown by the dashed arrows, the lengths of which are proportional to the rubidium/strontium ratio. The dashed arrows are slanted because the rubidium/strontium ratio is decreasing in proportion to the increase in strontium-87/strontium-86. The solid line drawn through the samples will thus progressively rotate from the horizontal to steeper and steeper slopes.

All lines drawn through the data points at any later time will intersect the horizontal line (constant strontium-87/strontium-86 ratio) at the same point in the lower left-hand corner. This point, where rubidium-87/strontium-86 = 0 tells the original strontium-87/strontium-86 ratio. From that we can determine the original daughter strontium-87 in each mineral, which is just what we need to know to determine the correct age.

There are now well over forty different radiometric dating techniques, each based on a different radioactive isotope. Most dating techniques involve multiple tests using different methods and on different minerals within a rock (isochrons).

For example some of the oldest rocks on earth are found in Western Greenland. Because of their great age, they have been especially well studied. The table below gives the ages, in billions of years, from twelve different studies using five different techniques on one particular rock formation in Western Greenland, the Amitsoq gneisses.

Note that scientists give their results with a stated uncertainty. They take into account all the possible errors and give a range within which they are 95% sure that the actual value lies. The top number, 3.60±0.05, refers to the range 3.60+0.05 to 3.60-0.05. The size of this range is every bit as important as the actual number. A number with a small uncertainty range is more accurate than a number with a larger range. For the numbers given above, one can see that all of the ranges overlap and agree between 3.55 and 3.74 billion years as the age of the rock. Several studies also showed that, because of the great ages of these rocks, they have been through several mild metamorphic heating events that disturbed the ages given by potassium-bearing minerals (not listed here). As pointed out earlier, different radiometric dating methods agree with each other most of the time, over many thousands of measurements.

All of the different dating methods agree–they agree a great majority of the time over millions of years of time. Some Christians make it sound like there is a lot of disagreement, but this is not the case. The disagreement in values needed to support the position of young-Earth proponents would require differences in age measured by orders of magnitude (e.g., factors of 10,000, 100,000, a million, or more). The differences actually found in the scientific literature are usually close to the margin of error, usually a few percent, not orders of magnitude! 3.55 to 3.74 billion is a 5% difference, but 3.5 to 0.000006 billion (6,000 years) is a 58,333,333% difference.

Vast amounts of data overwhelmingly favor an old Earth. Several hundred laboratories around the world are active in radiometric dating. Their results consistently agree with an old Earth. Over a thousand papers on radiometric dating were published in scientifically recognized journals in the last year, and hundreds of thousands of dates have been published in the last 50 years. Essentially all of these strongly favor an old Earth.

Radioactive decay rates have been measured for over sixty years now for many of the decay clocks without any observed changes. And it has been close to a hundred years since the uranium-238 decay rate was first determined. Both long-range and short-range dating methods have been successfully verified by dating lavas of historically known ages over a range of several thousand years.

And finally radiometric dating of certain Biblical archaeological sites confirm that the biblical history is true and accurate. For example:

Carbon-14 Dating of Copper Smelting in Edom (Jordan) Confirm Biblical Date of King Solomon’s Kingdom

The ¹⁴C dates associated with smelting debris layers from Khirbat en-Nahas demonstrate intensive 10th-9th century B.C. industrial metallurgical activities conducted by complex societies. High-precision radiocarbon dating at Khirbat en-Nahas establishes a date earlier than that suggested by previous studies utilizing pottery finds. The accuracy of ¹⁴C dating calls into question previous studies based solely upon pottery evidence. The current dating of the site to the 10th-9th century B.C. agrees with biblical dates for Solomon’s rule of the area.

1.Levy, T. E., T. Higham, C. B. Ramsey, N. G. Smith, E. Ben-Yosef, M. Robinson, S. Münger, K. Knabb, J. P. Schulze, M. Najjar, and L. Tauxe. 2008. High-precision radiocarbon dating and historical biblical archaeology in southern Jordan. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 105:16460ï¿½16465.

2.Copper ruins in Jordan bolster biblical record of King Solomon, Los Angeles Times, October 28, 2008.

You can’t have it both ways, dear evangelical reader. The carbon-14 dating works when it confirms the Bible but doesn’t work when it says things are older than 6,000 years?

The earth appears to be old? The earth is old…

• • •

Photo by KoolCats Photography at Flickr. Creative Commons License

Wednesdays with James: Lesson One

Wednesdays with James
Lesson One: Background and Big Picture

Ordinary Time provides an opportunity for those who follow the liturgical year to take a different direction in their approach to the Scriptures.

From Advent to Pentecost, the Church follows the Gospels as they depict the earthly career of Jesus the Messiah, the story of salvation. In the days after Pentecost we seek to live in the new life Jesus brought us through his Incarnation, Epiphany, death, resurrection, ascension, and pouring out of the Holy Spirit. Ordinary Time, by contrast, goes week by week, examining how we might live the life we share together in Christ.

I think, therefore, that Ordinary Time is a good season for the Church to study books of the Bible, in particular, the epistles, which were written to various congregations and individuals to guide them in the Christ-life. So, since we haven’t had a Bible study here in awhile, how about we take one up for the summer?

To start, I’d like to go where many Lutherans have feared to tread: the Epistle of James.

As I study this NT letter with you this summer, I will be consulting one of my favorite commentaries:

The Epistle of James (The New International Greek Testament Commentary), by Peter Davids

• • •

I have never been a big fan of spending a lot of time hashing out introductory matters of books of the Bible. At some level, studying the background of who wrote the books, when they were written and to whom is important, but as a pastor I tried to keep my focus on these issues as brief and simple as possible. And as a blog author, I can’t imagine that people would want to come here and read an extended discussion about who the “James” might have been that purportedly penned this epistle (1:1).

What is important to me, given centuries of debate about these introductory questions, is to come to a reasonable conclusion about the possible author, setting, and audience, and proceed on that basis. Most of what matters about these things can be gleaned from the internal evidence of the epistle itself.

Peter Davids comes to the following working hypothesis:

This brief discussion has certainly not settled the complex problem of the date and provenance of the Epistle of James. The evidence examined does point toward a supportable conclusion. G. Kittel appears to be correct in arguing for an early date for the book, in that the source material probably was early, and this means that this material is probably by James the Just. In the light of the Greek idiom used in the work, it is likely that either James received assistance in the editing of the work or that his teaching was edited at a later date (perhaps after his death) as the church spread beyond Jerusalem and began to use Greek more extensively….

The preceding section has argued that James is a two-stage work, an initial series of sermons and sayings, which ostensibly come from James the Just…, and a later redaction of these units into an epistle by either James or a member of the church.

The Epistle of James, if we accept David’s suggestion, is made up of early Christian preaching and proverbs, sermons and sayings written down and edited into a kind of tract or document providing guidance for Christian congregations. James is one example of how, when we read the Bible, we are reading the Word proclaimed. If we who are preachers and teachers would recognize this, perhaps we wouldn’t feel the need so much to analyze and expound, as to seek to find ways to let the scriptures themselves speak.

Next, I have always loved getting a “big picture” of biblical books. The process of learning to read and understand scripture involves getting a good overview of the material, then diving into the details. In studying the details, we then revise our understanding of the book as a whole and how its themes and arguments develop. This is an ongoing process. We move from macro to micro levels and then back again over and over in a continuing circle of reading and interpretation.

As for the big picture of James, Peter Davids contributes wonderful insights that have been of great help to me. I’ll conclude today’s post by giving you my own edited version of his outline, which I think holds up as a good overview of the epistle’s contents.

I encourage you to read through the book of James several times and compare what you read with this outline.

Civil Religion Series: The Other NRA

Civil Religion, part eight
The Other NRA

Presidential election years in the U.S. provide American Christians an opportunity to reflect upon our faith and how it applies to our lives as citizens and to the public issues that affect us all. We are taking many Tuesdays throughout 2016 to discuss matters like these.

At this point we are looking at the second book for this series: Was America Founded As a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction, by John Fea. Fea is Associate Professor of American History and Chair of the History Department at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania. He blogs at The Way of Improvement Leads Home.

• • •

A 2000 poll of a thousand Americans about their views of religion and government asked this as one of the questions:

Would you favor or oppose a Constitutional amendment which would make Christianity the official religion of the United States?

32%, nearly a third of the respondents, either “strongly favored” or “favored” that statement.

When I first read that, it surprised me. It shouldn’t have. I don’t recall having learned about such efforts before, but historian John Fea informs us that there was a time during the Civil War when amending the Constitution to make Christianity our official religion was a live public question in the United States.

In our last post, we noted that the Confederacy made an explicit point of including God in their Constitution in direct opposition to what they saw as the “godless” U.S. Constitution. This bothered many ministers and Christian leaders in the North. One called the omission of God in the U.S. Constitution “a national sin” and others explained Union military defeats as God’s punishment on the U.S. for neglecting to pay homage to him in its national charter. A group got together and did something about this in 1863.

In 1863 several ministers decided to do something to change this godless Constitution. They met in Xenia, Ohio, and proposed the following amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

WE, THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES, [recognizing the being and attributes of Almighty God, the Divine Authority of the Holy Scriptures, the law of God as the paramount rule, and Jesus, the Messiah, the Saviour and Lord of all] in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

This group of ministers eventually became known as the National Reform Association (NRA). (p. 23)

Fea lists several reasons why the NRA felt such an extraordinary measure to be necessary.

Their religious viewpoint held that “the decision to leave references to Christianity out of the Constitution was an ‘error and an evil’ that ‘dishonors God.’”

Some proposed that the Civil War itself was God’s punishment for having a “godless Constitution.”

Others argued that since the “great majority” of Americans were [Protestant] Christians, the Constitution should reflect this.

They pointed to the Constitutions of the states, most of which explicitly invoked God, and some of which still required a religious test for officeholders.

They argued that a Christian amendment would be true to the history of our people and government, as this statement from the 1874 NRA national convention affirmed: “This country was settled and its institutions founded by those who believed in God and accepted His Word as the law of their lives.”

Many argued that this was an essential step to keep public education “Christian” in the U.S. Some states were considering laws at that time to prohibit Bible reading in public schools. An amendment was necessary, they argued, to fight the forces of secularism that were seeking to “obliterate every Christian feature from existing institutions.”

Another danger they saw was immigration, which flourished after the Civil War. This amendment sought to protect the U.S. from what the NRA saw as an invasion of dangerous European ideas such as Catholicism, Marxism, and socialism.

In another article in which he recalls the NRA and their recommendation to amend the Constitution to guarantee America’s status as a “Christian nation,” John Fea reminds us that this debate is nothing new, but has always been part of the fabric of our national conversation.

The movement to add a Christian amendment to the Constitution failed, but this did not derail continued attempts get such an amendment passed. The NRA renewed its platform again in 1894 and 1910 and continued to meet through World War I. In 1947 and 1954 the National Association of Evangelicals promoted an effort to add the following words to the Constitution: “This nation divinely recognizes the authority and law of Jesus Christ, Savior and Ruler of Nations through whom are bestowed the blessings of God Almighty.”

Attempts to make the U.S. Constitution more Christian or to make Christianity the official state religion have been around for a long time.

By the way, John Fea wrote that article in the context of a 2013 effort by North Carolina legislators to make Christianity the official state religion. The impulse to declare America “a Christian nation” has not died out.

Mondays with Michael Spencer: May 23, 2016

1266124658_53a93500c9_o — Magic Spectacles, Photo by Alan Parkinson

Mondays with Michael Spencer: May 23, 2016

Today we continue a series of Monday posts with excerpts of Michael Spencer’s thoughts about the Bible and what it does and does not promise to do for us.

• • •

I believe most Christians use the word “inspiration” to mean “the Bible is a magic book, where God speaks to us in unusual ways.”

By this they mean that the contents of the Bible–the verses–have unusual power when read or applied. So if we were to transfer this idea to another book, and treat it as we treat the Bible, it might be like this: If we considered Walden to be inspired in the typical evangelical way, we would not be looking for the big ideas or the main point in Thoreau’s book, but we would be examining particular sentences to see if they “spoke to us.” The actual text of Walden would be secondary to our use of verses.

So on, let’s say, the matter of changing jobs, we might find a sentence that says, “Most men live lives of quiet desperation,” and we would conclude that this verse is God telling us to change jobs. Or another sentence might say, “I left my job and moved to the woods.” This, we would say, is God speaking to us. Now we might be able to read the entire book and sustain that conclusion, or we might find–if we studied better–that the book didn’t sustain that particular use of an individual sentence. It wouldn’t really matter, however, to most of us, because God used the verse to speak to us, and that is the way we read the Bible.

Or, for further example, say someone is facing a troubled marriage. He reads and discovers a sentence in Walden that says, “I did not speak to another person for over a month.” From this, he concludes that God is telling him to not argue with his spouse. The fact that this is a universe away from what Thoreau meant with that sentence would be irrelevant. This is how we would be using Walden as a “magic book.” Recognize the method? I think we all do.

If we were committed to the “magic book” approach and someone were to teach Walden as a whole, telling us the main ideas and message in the book, we might not consider that particularly impressive. It is nice to know what the book says, we would say, but the use of the book as a “magic text” doesn’t depend at all on understanding the meaning of the overall book, or the message Thoreau was conveying. Introductions and analysis of the book as a whole would almost be a secondary, and mostly useless, exercise in comparison to the more exciting and personal “magic book” use of Walden. We might be confident, in fact, that the ordinary reader can handle the “inspired Walden” with far more relevance for his life than the educated scholar handles the same book, because the scholar doesn’t believe that the sentences contain the power. So ignorance is no barrier in the magic book approach. Recognize that, too? Uh-huh.

I hope you can see the parallels here with our use of the Bible, and the many “magic book” methods that are commonly used to present the Christian life as growing out of the Bible. Take a recent Joel Osteen sermon I heard.

In the message, Osteen used part of the story of Elijah. God told Elijah that ravens would bring him food at a certain brook. From this, Osteen preached that God will provide us what we need to be blessed if we show up at the right place in life and look for God’s blessing. This dubious use of the Bible is applauded within evangelicalism as completely appropriate because it is “magic bookism,” and it speaks to us about our lives and concerns, which are always tantamount in our minds. Yet it is hardly a leap to say that this grabbing of a few verses and using them as the basis for a mystical principle for being blessed is a very strange way to approach the Bible’s message to us. But it honors the Bible as a “magic book”, and far more people are listening to Joel Osteen, a man who arguably couldn’t present an introduction/exposition of any Biblical book if asked to do so, than are listening to preachers and teachers who understand what the Bible is and is saying.

• • •

Photo by Alan Parkinson at Flickr. Creative Commons License

Pic & Poem of the Week: May 22, 2016

Pic & Poem of the Week
May 22, 2016 (Holy Trinity)

For your pleasure and contemplation, I will begin posting an original photograph and a corresponding poem each week on Sundays. May these offerings help lead you to a deeper place of rest on the Lord’s Day.

Click on the picture for a larger image.

• • •

Trinity Sunday
by Malcolm Guite

In the Beginning, not in time or space,
But in the quick before both space and time,
In Life, in Love, in co-inherent Grace,
In three in one and one in three, in rhyme,
In music, in the whole creation story,
In His own image, His imagination,
The Triune Poet makes us for His glory,
And makes us each the other’s inspiration.
He calls us out of darkness, chaos, chance,
To improvise a music of our own,
To sing the chord that calls us to the dance,
Three notes resounding from a single tone,
To sing the End in whom we all begin;
Our God beyond, beside us and within.

From Sounding the Seasons: Seventy sonnets for Christian year

Saturday Ramblings, May 21, 2016

Hello, friends, and welcome to the weekend. Ready to Ramble?

It’s graduation season, and you can tell something about a school by who it brings in for commencement speaker. Even small, non-distinguished schools can bring in important thinkers and speakers if they try. Carthage College nabbed Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. High Point University will host Condoleeza Rice. Scripps College went with Madeleine Albright. And North Virginia Community College even snagged Jill Biden, wife of our vice-president. And then there is Liberty University, who went with Mel Gibson, Vince Vaughn, and Rashad Jennings, a football player. Liberty also decided to give Jennings an honorary doctorate for some reason.

Speaking of Liberty, students in the fall will find at least one of the conservative school’s rules to be eliminated: they can now keep handguns in their dorm rooms. But not Lava Lamps.

Going to be flying soon? You might want to leave a little extra time. Like 8 hours or so. It seems the security screening lines have dramatically increased all throughout the country. Airport chiefs have gone creative to try lighten the mood. The Atlanta airport is adding extra music performers in the areas before security, and handing out snacks and beverages to passengers in line. Cincinnati International Airport has been trying to stabilize the situation with miniature horses (because who doesn’t like miniature horses?). And the San Diego International Airport decided clowns would be a good idea.

Not helping, TSA, not helping... — **Not helping, TSA, not helping…**

The TSA has pledged to add 800 new security staff by June to ease queues, but passengers this summer should still be prepared for long waits. And short horses.

By the way, you know TSA lines are too long when you read the headline, Corpse turns up at Atlanta International Airport security.

I don’t think I’m often on the same page with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. But I am on this one: They really, really dislike Kim Kardashian. In fact, they are accusing her of being a “secret agent” which may be giving her too much credit. A spokesman for the group’s Organized Cyberspace Crimes Unit accused Kardashian of working for Instagram as part of a complicated ploy to “target young people and women,” ostensibly corrupting them with aspirational photos depicting a lifestyle that’s at odds with Islam.

This might be a good place to plug my favorite twitters stream: KimKierkegaardashian (@KimKierkegaard), described as “The philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard mashed with the tweets & observations of Kim Kardashian.” Some recent faves:

The video below is for an IndieGoGo campaign called September 11th Redux with a goal of $1.5 million. The goal: to re-create 9/11. That’s right, they want to buy a old 747, fill it with fuel, and launch it into a tall building, to see if the “truthers” have a point. What could possible go wrong?

BTW,if you donate $125 you’ll get a T-Shirt that says “9-11: THE REDUX” which will be awesome for those of you who love explaining your clothing to the TSA and Federal officers.

Hillary and Bill Clinton raked in a combined $6.725 million in paid speeches in 2015, according to a personal financial disclosure form released late Tuesday night. Hillary gave six paid speeches for a total income of $1.475 million. Her biggest pay day was to Ebay ($315,000) but she slummed it with the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce ($150,000). Bill gave 22 paid speeches last year for a total of $5.25 million. Of these speeches, 11 of them occurred after his wife became a presidential candidate. In 2014, the Clintons made roughly $18 million from roughly 100 paid speeches — many of which were to banks. Altogether, they have made more than $153 million in paid speeches since they left they White House, receiving an average payday of $210,795 for each address. Of course, these banks and companies only pay this kind of change because of Bill and Hillary’s eloquence, not for any quid pro quo. Just ask them.

Speaking of Hillary, she is not out of the primary woods just yet, after tying Bernie Sanders in Kentucky and losing in Oregon last week. Actually, I only mention this to set up this gif:

bernie sanders hillary clinton bernie mash up matrix

A new Pew Research Center study of the ways religion influences the daily lives of Americans finds that people who are highly religious are more engaged with their extended families, more likely to volunteer, more involved in their communities and generally happier with the way things are going in their lives. But they told “white lies” only slightly less often than non-highly religious people, and lost their tempers at the same rate. Pew also published this very interesting info:

Apparently, nearly one in seven Christians don’t think belief in God is essential to their Christianity. Okaaaaayyy…

How much was leBron James given in his latest deal to endorse Nike shoes? Apparently, somewhere north of 1 billion dollars.

Spotted on British Craigslist:

What do right-wing conspiracy nuts and the porn industry have in common (well, besides the whole “sell my soul for dollars” thing)? Answer: they have to keep upping the ante. Take infoWars broadcaster and Donald Trump ally Alex Jones. He’s been claiming for a while now that First Lady Michelle Obama is secretly a transgender man. But this time he’s adding a new twist to his conspiracy theory: that Obama had comedienne Joan Rivers killed after she joked about the first lady being trans. “Don’t forget,” Jones said, “the famous comedienne Joan Rivers said, ‘Of course everyone knows she’s a tranny.’ She’s dead serious, ‘She’s a man.’ Deader than a doornail in a routine operation where basically she had fire poured down her throat and was a fire-breathing goblin. Dead on arrival. Shoot your mouth off, honey, you will die.”

But why stop there: “I really think — her daughters don’t look like her — I really think this is some weird hoax they did again,” he said, “just like he didn’t get sworn in on the Bible, it was the Quran. All this weirdness, I mean, I used to laugh at this stuff, but man, it’s all about rubbing our noses in it. I think it’s all an arranged marriage, it’s all completely fake and it’s this big sick joke because he’s obsessed with transgender, just like some weird cult or something. I think Michelle Obama is a man. I really do. I really do. I believe it.”

And the proof of all this is . . . the number of hits online videos have. “The national media takes it when I talk about this and acts like I’m crazy [no way!!!]. Listen, there’s hundreds of millions views on YouTube.” Of course, there are also millions of views on videos claiming that Obama and other leaders are shapeshifting reptilian humanoids, another conspiracy promoted by Jones.

By the way, Alex also has an explanation for “why we have so many gay people today.” It’s juice boxes. Gay-tainted juice boxes. Who knew?

By the way, Trump appeared on Jones’ radio show in December, when he was already the frontrunner for the GOP nomination, and complimented Jones for his “amazing” reputation. And Trump’s top confidant, Roger Stone, has been on Jones’ show nearly every week during the campaign.

George Zimmerman’s auction for the gun he used to kill Trayvon Martin has closed … and the winning bid topped $120,000. Zimmerman had to relist the auction, after the price on the initial offering was deliberately run up to 65 million dollars by a disgusted online vigilante. The name this man chose for his fake account: “Racist McShootface”.

The Church of Scotland will launch a two-year investigation into the possibility of introducing online baptisms, Communion and other Christian sacraments. The church, known as The Kirk, has seen its rolls fall by almost one-third between 2004 and 2015, to just under 364,000 members. The church’s Legal Questions Committee, which is responsible for advising the General Assembly, the church’s lawmaking body, is pushing for “a wide-ranging review of practice and procedure which is impacted by the use of new technology in church life.” It adds: “Now is the time to open up a wide range of discussion on these contemporary developments.”

After pushback, the Church issued the following clarification:

“Our report makes reference to the possibilities of online membership and even about people gaining access to the sacraments without being physically present in a congregation. This has led to some headlines about ‘online baptisms’, which would represent a very radical departure from current church practice. It is important to emphasise that the Legal Questions Committee isn’t putting forward any such proposals at this time.”

So, this happened in New York last week:

No-one has ever accused The Christian Post of having a sense of humor. Until now. Somehow they hired a satirist who is actually funny. Here are some of the top headlines from Ligonberry Fields:

Want some more Christian satire headlines? Here are some of the latest from Babylon Bee:

Well, that’s it for this week. I leave you with the musical stylings of one of Japan’s favorite pop artist, because we are very cosmopolitan and sophisticated here at the Ramblings. Besides, I am hoping Miguel will be able to turn this into a visual hymn for the modern church (just add some Lutheran lyrics, but keep the sweet dance moves and backgrounds). This is Kyary Pamyu Pamyu and one of her first big hits, Tsukematsukeru, from 2011. Enjoy!!