The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: October 19, 2019 — Open Table Edition

The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: October 19, 2019
Open Table Edition

Coming back from a long trip usually takes me about three weeks to recover. This time it has been better, but it still required readjustment back into the daily work schedule and so on. Bottom line is that I’m pretty tired here at the end of the week and don’t have a lot of energy to put on a full-scale brunch this morning.

So, we’ll hand you the implements and let you cook up a feast of conversation today.

This will be an open table brunch. You choose the topics and discuss them.

Please, no food fights.

Franciscan Friday: Richard Rohr on the Franciscan Way

Statue of St. Francis, Cathedral of San Rufino, Assisi

Richard Rohr on the Franciscan Way

Coincidentally, while we were in Europe, Richard Rohr was sending out two weeks of daily meditations on Franciscan spirituality in my email. You can review those articles HERE. I encourage you to read and meditate on them all.

I would like to explore some of these themes on Fridays for awhile. For today, here are a few quotes from Rohr for your consideration and discussion.

There are always new vocabularies, fresh symbols, new frames and styles, but Francis must have known, at least intuitively, that there is only one enduring spiritual insight and everything else follows from it: The visible world is an active doorway to the invisible world, and the invisible world is much larger than the visible. I would call this mystical insight “the mystery of incarnation,” or the essential union of the material and the spiritual worlds, or simply “Christ.”

•

Francis was fully at home in this created world. He saw all things in the visible world as endless dynamic and operative symbols of the Real, a theater and training ground for a heaven that is already available to us in small doses in this life. What you choose now, you shall have later seems to be the realization of the saints. Not an idyllic hope for a later heaven but a living experience right now.

•

Unlike the monastic life, which strove to domesticate nature and to bring it under control, Francis expected to live lightly on the earth, a burden neither to the earth nor to those who fed and clothed him.

• John Quigley

•

Francis fell in love with the humanity and the humility of Jesus; while most of Western and even Eastern Christianity focused on proving the divinity of Jesus.

•

Jesus never told us to separate ourselves from the world. That’s why Francis would not be a monk. The friars were a totally new religious movement. Francis wanted us to live in the middle of the cities right with the people and not to separate ourselves. That’s because he didn’t hate the world. He said you have to find a way interiorly to love and have compassion for the world, which may mean going apart for a time for the purpose of prayer and contemplation.

How Do You Distinguish between Religious Fervor and Mental Illness?

How Do You Distinguish between Religious Fervor and Mental Illness?

I was reading this BioLogos Forum discussion that was discussing whether some forms of Young Earth Creationism (YEC) overlaps with mental illness.  The discussion initiator thought that since the new ICR museum teaches that biblical references to dragons are really about dinosaurs, who not only lived on the ark but were seen by Alexander the Great; that such a delusion might be reflective of a type of mental illness.  A delusion being defined as “a belief firmly held in spite of strong contradictory evidence”.  Other commentators were quick to point out the insulting nature of this assertion with one commentator making the point:

“I don’t think there is such a thing as a human being with no delusions (unless it is somebody who can’t engage in any formal thought process at all, such as an infant). If anyone thinks they have no delusions, then that is their capital delusion right there – along with the inevitable pile of your other delusions that they are blind to.”

The Scientific American article that gives this post its title was referenced.  I was reminded again of the Scientific American article while reading Ruth Tucker’s post at Jesus Creed about missionary Amy Carmichael.  Carmichael was born in Millisle, Northern Ireland in 1867.  According to Tucker, Carmichael served in India without home leave for more than 55 years. She founded the Dohnavur Fellowship, an independent mission (including orphanage), as well as the Sisters of the Common Life, a community of women who made vows of celibacy.  According to Tucker, Carmichael criticized other missionaries as too lax in their work. They took vacations and joined together for celebrations. Not those at Dohnavur. Amy did not take furloughs, or holidays; neither would her workers. She made a vow of celibacy, so also her workers.

Now, I’ve blogged about this issue before, for example, here, and Tucker’s description of Amy Carmichael would seem to fit that description. Defenders of Amy Carmichael would assert that her motivations are pure; she’s “doing it all for Jesus” and she is simply “on fire for the Lord”, and is a “fool for Christ” (1 Corinthians 4:10).  They would point out Jesus Himself made such radical demands as in Luke 14:26, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple” or Mark 9:47, “And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell”.

The Scientific American article, by Nathaniel P. Morris, a resident physician in psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine, does a pretty good job of examining the nuance and ambiguities of the issue. At the one extreme you have the Richard Dawkins types who assert all religion is a delusion and a manifestation of mental illness.  At the other end you have the Amy Carmichael types who are so convinced they’ve heard from God they have no problem treating those who disagree with them as unworthy of even being Christians.  Can you be a jerk for Jesus?  I’m gonna say… no.

Many of us here at Imonk are post-Evangelical.  Part of that moving on is the realization that we are recovering jerks. And that jerk-aspect of our religious practice is not, in fact, a healthy mental state.  Wretched Urgency, Michael Spencer called it.  And in another famous post he inveighed against “weird Christians”.  If your religious fervor is turning you into a jerk then maybe it’s time for a reality check.  How do you know?  Here’s a couple of things from my experience:

  1. You always feel you have to be “on” there is no relaxing… relaxing is slacking.
  2. People are telling you that you are a jerk.
  3. You don’t have a sense of humor about “the issue”.
  4. You only talk about one thing, that thing being, the thing you are fanatical about.
  5. You are unwilling to even consider opposing points of view.
  6. If everyone doesn’t hold the same point of view as you on an issue, it will mean the end of the world, and they are your enemy.

Get some help, my friend…

Another Look: Chasing Francis

Assisi, with a view of the Basilica of St. Francis

Another Look: Chasing Francis

Francis was a Catholic, an evangelical street preacher, a radical social activist, a contemplative who devoted hours to prayer, a mystic who had direct encounters with God, and someone who worshiped with all the enthusiasm and spontaneity of a Pentecostal. He was a wonderful integration of all the theological streams we have today.

• from Chasing Francis

•

One of the places I most wanted to visit in Italy was Assisi, the home of St. Francis. For one thing, I am an aficianado of Giotto, the 14th century Florence artist, who was one of the first “modern” painters, capturing the human expressions and feelings of his subjects. The Basilica of St. Francis is lined within with frescoes by Giotto, both of the life of Christ and the career of St. Francis. I just could not travel to Italy and not see some Giotto frescoes in person.

But then, of course, there is Francis himself. Where some in our day have recommended a “Benedict” option for Christians, I myself would prefer to see the Church take the “Franciscan” route. More about that on Friday.

I am finishing up a book about which Michael wrote a review when I first started reading IM. He also interviewed its author. The book is Chasing Francis: A Pilgrim’s Tale, by Ian Morgan Cron, the story of a mega-church pastor who goes through a crisis of faith and finds it revitalized by going to Italy and learning about St. Francis and Franciscan spirituality.

I won’t say more now, but will re-post Michael’s original review. You can also read his interview with the author HERE.

• • •

Recommendation and Review: Chasing Francis by Ian Morgan Cron
by Michael Spencer (2007)

There’s a place in Ian Morgan Cron’s Chasing Francis where his spiritually-brokedown-now-on-pilgrimage pastor protagonist returns, looks his congregation in the eye and says “When I left here, I wasn’t sure what a Christian looked like anymore. My idea of how to follow Jesus had run out of gas.” The characters may be (barely) fictional, but with those kinds of sentiments at the bottom of this book, it should receive a wide audience.

Cron is pastor of Trinity Church in Greenwich, Connecticut, an evangelical/Anglican/emerging church that is intentionally designed around the emphases of ministry that come from the life of Saint Francis. Chasing Francis isn’t exactly Cron’s story, but it’s close. It is a kind of narrative fiction that allows the author to tell his story in the form of another story. Chase Falson’s loss and recovery of faith entails a breakdown in the pulpit, a pilgrimage to Italy with a posse of Franciscans, mysticism, food and an unlikely love story. It’s well written, with lots of catchy humor. I read the book in three hours and made plenty of notes along the way.

It’s also a book that includes perhaps the best study guide I’ve ever seen in a book of this type. Cron pulls from all sorts of sources that the readers of this blog will appreciate, from David Fitch to Wendall Berry to Thomas Merton. The quotations and material in the study guide are a second book in themselves. An outstanding bibliography is another bonus. These make the book very usable for groups.

This is a story that makes much of the emerging discussion more accessible by using fiction and narrative, as well as Christian history, to confront the situation in evangelicalism. Chase Falson’s turn to Roman Catholic spiritual resources may make some readers a bit uneasy, but Cron- an Anglican priest- isn’t selling any denomination or tradition as the answer. He’s seeking to find the value in diverse traditions and restore them to the church.

Much of the material in this book resembles standard emerging church apologetics and analysis, but the personal approach of the novel format makes this a book that won’t have more conservative evangelicals flying off the handle. Cron’s forays into politics and environmentalism will stretch those conservative readers, and his critiques of materialism and the current shallowness of church growth evangelicalism may sting, but this book isn’t a screed. It’s not burning down what it leaves behind. The generosity of Saint Francis is a big part of the package.

Statue of St. Francis (detail), Cathedral of San Rufino, Assisi

I understand that this book appeared about a year ago, but factors conspired to sink the book into an invisible profile. Now Navpress is reintroducing Chasing Francis, and I’m glad they are, because this is an excellent book to encounter Saint Francis’s legacy as it represents many of the emerging and post-evangelical concerns of Christians who do feel they are products of a movement that was great at introductions, but has left us without coherent and usable directions for the journey.

A few elements of the book were less than entirely believable, and some characters need a touch more depth. The ready invite of a Protestant to the Roman Catholic Eucharist is rather surprising! All in all, Cron’s first book is creative, interesting, helpful and enjoyable. It was time well spent and I recommend the book, especially to ministers who feel they may be about to stand up and announce they’ve lost their way. Chasing Francis is a great guidebook to one path back to sanity.

Savoring

Basilica of St Francis. Photo by Dennis Jarvis at Flickr

A man walks down the street
It’s a street in a strange world
Maybe it’s the third world
Maybe it’s his first time around
Doesn’t speak the language
He holds no currency
He is a foreign man
He is surrounded by the sound, the sound
Cattle in the marketplace
Scatterings and orphanages
He looks around, around
He sees angels in the architecture
Spinning in infinity
He says, “Amen! Hallelujah!”

• Paul Simon, You Can Call Me Al

• • •

When I was younger and new to the experience of visiting other parts of the world, traveling could be, and was often, an epiphany. An experience of transcendence. A journey through a door that awakened thoughts, senses, and feelings I never knew I had before. I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. Everything was different. I found myself stunned by the sensory blitzkrieg and then intoxicated in a kaleidoscope of strange wonder.

Now that I’m in another season of life, it’s more about savoring. It is about appreciating the world and the people I meet. It is about not expecting them to change me or me to change them, but for us merely to be with each other, in my place or theirs, sharing and cherishing what we have been given.

No longer making new roads, but finding and walking the ones made for us.

The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

• Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road

Monday with Michael Spencer: Trusting the Father?

 

Monday with Michael Spencer: October 14, 2019
Trusting the Father?

Yesterday, I experienced the great part of being a teacher; one of those experiences that make all the others worth it.

It was in my advanced placement English IV class. Our brightest seniors. I’m fortunate to be able to work with them.

A few days before we’d taken our final exam, and with two days left in the quarter, I decided to show the 1989 Peter Weir movie, Dead Poet’s Society, featuring Robin Williams in one of his finest performances, and then write an essay.

It’s the late 1950s, and conformity is in the air at little Welton Academy, a college prepatory boarding school where Mr. Keating has been hired to teach senior English. Keating tosses the boys some high-grade existentialism and budding beat philosophy along with an adolescent love of romantic literature. The effect of Keating’s mentoring on his young charges is explosive, with results varying from the revelatory to the tragic.

If you haven’t seen the film in the last twenty years, then prepare for a spoiler. One of the boys, Neil Perry, has been ordered by his compulsively authoritarian father to become a doctor. Neil has little reason to resist until the acting bug bites and, against his father’s express wishes, he plays the part of Puck in a community production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. His father is furious and pulls Neil out of Welton with the intention of sending him to military school.

His first night home, Neil commits suicide.

I asked my students to write Neil a letter, assuming that he would read it before killing himself. I’ve done this assignment before, but this time I asked the students to read their letters before the class, with one student designated as a responder.

Predictably, all of the students advised Neil, among other things, to wait till he was 18, then do whatever he wanted to do, no matter what his father wanted for him. The point was getting out from under the authoritarian father and doing whatever you most wanted to do in life.

It was a good assignment and we had a good discussion. Then I asked Kim Kwan, one of my Korean students, to read his letter.

We have a lot of Korean students. They are, in the main, some of our hard-working and most successful students. I’m fascinated by the process they are part of as they bridge two cultures. This is particularly obvious on the subject of the value of education, as we were about to learn.

Kim very matter of factly told the class that Neil should obey his parents and become a doctor. Kim said that Neil’s parents had sacrificed for him and they loved him. His greatest happiness should be in doing what they wanted him to do in life.

My American students were stunned, to say the least.

Further, Kim said he related to Neil because he had wanted to be in the hotel industry, but his family wanted him to be a dentist. Without any of the expected bribery, his parents simply told him that he should be a dentist, and he changed his mind and vocational direction. His parents, he said, were willing to work hard and sacrifice so he could become a dentist, and he beleived their wisdom was best for him. He could make many persons’ lives better as a dentist, and he might even make enough money to buy a hotel. It might be difficult sometimes to make this choice, but it was the right decision and the way to the most happiness.

He trusted his parents, and he wanted to honor them.

The reaction of our students — and my own — was fairly predictable. We simply would never go this far. In fact, I have doubts, as a Christian, that anyone should go this far, though I have no problem with using as much influence as possible to keep a student in school and in a position to make a choice of careers based on a degree and an education.

But deciding for them? Like an arranged marriage? Believing that I know what my son or daughter should do with the rest of their lives? I’m not that competent. My own feelings about freedom are mixed in with my desire to be a good parent. In the end, I support my children’s decisions about vocation.

But I’m also an American. I’ve never believed that self-sacrifice was all that great an idea. My students and I are hard-wired to avoid difficult choices that might be less than what we wanted at the time. Why can’t we all do what we want as much of the time as possible? Why trust anyone when you can follow your own dreams and desires?

Kim was telling us that, in his worldview, doing what he wanted was not the way to happiness. Trusting his parents was the way to happiness, even if it meant sacrifice, suffering, an uphill struggle in a career that wasn’t his first choice.

Honoring his parents was more important to him than doing what he wanted to do.

We wanted his parents to make their happiness dependent on letting Kim do whatever he wanted to do.

Sound familiar?

Yes, that’s where I’m going.

I thought about it all day.

I should trust and honor God. I should trust his choices that are not my first choices. I should trust the sacrifice he has made for me. What further proof do I need that he is for me and wants what is best for me?

Why do I assume that the Gospel is all about a God who makes my happiness and a guarantee of my choices his greatest concern? Why do I assume that discipleship is a process where I will always get what I want, the way I want it, when I want it?

Why do I think that the way chosen for me by a loving Father can’t possibly be that path of sacrifice; that path of difficulty?

Why does what Kim Kwan is saying sound so strange to me? Why does it sound so unlike the way I want God to be?

Why does it irritate me that he trusts his parents so much?

Today, I was the student and my Korean friend was the teacher. I’m not signing up for the superiority of this way of being family, but I see the beauty of it as well as the weaknesses. What I see most clearly of all is what Ravi Zacharias called “the imprint of the Father” on the human soul; the deeply imprinted fingerprints of a time when we trusted God more than we trusted ourselves. The deep imprint of what it means to be made in such a way that you know your happiness and your own choices are not the ultimate path to joy.

The shadow of the cross that lies at the heart of the Father’s love; the cross that made Paul say “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. Yet not I, but Christ lives in me.”

Dispatch — Homeward Bound: October 13, 2019

Pienza, silhouetted against the setting sun

Dispatch — Homeward Bound: October 13, 2019

I am not one of those Christians who feels skittish about using the words “lucky” or “fortunate.” Some people I know feel compelled to say they are “blessed” when something good happens in their lives, and that’s okay I guess. However, it tends to raise questions of theodicy — If I am blessed, what about those times when things go wrong or even horribly wrong? Am I then cursed? What about those who do not have all the privileges, advantages, and “blessings” that I have? Am I more blessed than them? Why would that be?

So, “lucky” and “fortunate” work fine for me. From my limited human perspective, there is no accessible metaphysical reason why I should have been allowed, for example, to have taken this three-week trip to Switzerland and Italy with my wife and enjoy it to the full. And though there are increasing concerns about the impact of “over-tourism” as populations and prosperity increase, I still can’t help but feel we are among the 1% when it comes to our good fortune in being able to travel like this.

Monticchiello by lamplight

I am aware that it is due to many people in our lives. Our parents, who have supported us and provided for us generously. Our children and grandchildren, who watched over our home while we were away. Our colleagues at work and at church, who took over duties in our absence. Pastor Dan and the other writers who went the extra mile and pitched in here at Internet Monk. And a host of others.

As we fly home today, then, I am feeling both blessed and lucky. I am thankful to God, the source of all blessings in Christ through the Holy Spirit. And I am awed at what a lucky man I am. I can’t explain it all, but there it is.

I wish with all my heart that all people would be as blessed and lucky as I am.

St. Benedict blessing pilgrims who leave the Abbey of Monte Oliveto Maggiore

Saturday Brunch, October 12, 2019

Hello friends, and welcome to the weekend? Better have some brunch before your big plans for the day.

Regular commentator Ted said on Tuesday that I should include cats in my column this week. I always obey Ted; he has some rich blackmail material on me. So I will be throwing in some random cat videos of cats. Hope you enjoy. Let’s start now.

 

When Paul Gilmore was 13 his family emigrated from England to Australia. Paul got a little bored on the long boat ride, so wrote a letter asking someone to be his penpal, put it in a bottle, and threw it overboard. Last week the bottle was found by nine-year-old Jyah Elliott — FIFTY YEARS later. Jyah found the bottle on a beach in South Australia, and wrote back on Tuesday.

It was a cold-blooded crime. Reptile breeder Brian Gundy had just given a talk and animal presentation Saturday at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in downtown San Jose. While going to get his car parked on the second level of the Fourth and San Fernando Street garage about 4:30 p.m., he left his his snakes and lizards in boxes and a bag in a no-parking zone.

When he returned for his critters, he made a grim discovery.

“As I was loading up my gear, I realized the bag that had my four pythons and blue skink lizard inside was gone and they were just there seconds ago.”

I feel really bad for the snakes, but I would LOVE to see the thief’s reaction when he opened that bag—hopefully in really small car.

 

 

Well, this is interesting: A new experiment proves that giant molecules can exist in two places at once: “Giant molecules can be in two places at once . . . That’s something that scientists have long known is theoretically true based on a few facts: Every particle or group of particles in the universe is also a wave—even large particles, even bacteria, even human beings, even planets and stars. And waves occupy multiple places in space at once. So any chunk of matter can also occupy two places at once. Physicists call this phenomenon ‘quantum superposition,’ and for decades, they have demonstrated it using small particles. But in recent years, physicists have scaled up their experiments, demonstrating quantum superposition using larger and larger particles. Now, in a paper published Sept. 23 in the journal Nature Physics, an international team of researchers has caused molecule made up of up to 2,000 atoms to occupy two places at the same time.”

We’re gonna need more cream cheese: A semi-trailer hauling 38,000 pounds of bagels erupted into flames Sunday night in Northwest Indiana.

On the plus side, now they’re already toasted!

Why do zebras have stripes? Japanese researchers had a theory that they wanted to test out: that the stripes confused flies, who then bit the zebras less often than they would if they had no stripes. But how to test this? Well, why not paint some stripes on cows? 

Sure enough, the striped bovines had 50 percent less flea bites than their plain-jane sisters.

What is the oldest restaurant in the world? “A tiny trattoria in Rome that specialises in tripe and boasts Caravaggio, Goethe and Keith Richards among its past customers has laid claim to being the world’s oldest restaurant and hopes to knock a Spanish rival out of the record books.”

 

 

Apple removes app: The company took down HKmap.live, which let protesters in Hong Kong track the police, after intense criticism from China.

Alex Cameron is no fan of street art. In fact, he argues that street art is a crime and should be punished not celebrated:

“Street art is an individual act that speaks of a chronic lack of consideration for anyone else. Its creators think they know best. They decide what, when and where. The people who live there, and must live with it, don’t have a say. There is no ‘demand’ for street art from ordinary people, and there is no consensual or participatory impulse on the part of the artist. It is only one person’s view of what should be and what is good for ordinary people. It is the act of an entitled, middle-class narcissist.”

 

 

Dominic Green laments the decline of American arts: “Everything is derivative and nostalgic. Nothing of note happened in painting or dance — or criticism, because the task of the American critic is to write obituaries and rewrite press releases. In music, Taylor Swift, once the Great White Hope of a dying industry, emitted a scrupulously bland album by committee. The jazz album of the year was, as it was last year, a studio off cut from John Coltrane, who died in 1967. The show, or what remained of it, was stolen by Lizzo, an obese but self-affirming squawker who, befitting an age of irony and multi-tasking, is the first person to twerk and play the flute at the same time. Meanwhile at the Alamo of high culture, 87-year-old John Williams marked the Tanglewood Festival’s 80th anniversary by perpetrating selections from Star Wars and Saving Private Ryan for an audience of equally geriatric and tasteless boomers.”

Do you agree?

 

When did the universe stop making sense? That’s the question LiveScience asked this week:

We’re getting something wrong about the universe.

It might be something small: a measurement issue that makes certain stars looks closer or farther away than they are, something astrophysicists could fix with a few tweaks to how they measure distances across space. It might be something big: an error — or series of errors — in  cosmology, or our understanding of the universe’s origin and evolution. If that’s the case, our entire history of space and time may be messed up. But whatever the issue is, it’s making key observations of the universe disagree with each other: Measured one way, the universe appears to be expanding at a certain rate; measured another way, the universe appears to be expanding at a different rate. And, as a new paper shows, those discrepancies have gotten larger in recent years, even as the measurements have gotten more precise.

They also gave us this really cool illustration of the problem. To understand it go here: 

Related question: How likely is it that our brains — part of the physical universe — will ever fully be able to understand the physical universe?

Here is Alex Noel who won the New England Giant Pumpkin Weigh-Off with a  2,294.5 pounds gourd:

 

Hmmm…this doesn’t seem right: a study claims that one American in four has NEVER eaten vegetables? How is that possible?

Best and worst candies? As soon as October hits, debates on hot-button political issues take a backseat to what might be the most important discussion of all time: Which Halloween candy is the best, and which is the worst? To find out, CandyStore.com aggregated data from several best and worst lists from sources like Business Insider, Bon Appétit, and BuzzFeed, and combined its findings with surveys from more than 30,000 of its customers. The results are about as close to a definitive answer as we can maybe ever hope to get.

10 Best Halloween Candies

  1. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
  2. Snickers
  3. Twix
  4. Kit Kat
  5. M&Ms
  6. Nerds
  7. Butterfinger
  8. Sour Patch Kids
  9. Skittles
  10. Hershey Bar

10 Worst Halloween Candies

  1. Candy Corn
  2. Circus Peanuts
  3. Peanut Butter Kisses
  4. Wax Coke Bottles
  5. Necco Wafers
  6. Tootsie Rolls
  7. Smarties
  8. Licorice
  9. Good & Plenty
  10. Bit-O-Honey

In case you don’t recognize the name of some of these, here is a visual

Worst Halloween Candy Top Ten

This part surprised me. How can anyone think candy corn is worse than those nasty, chalky necco wafers, or those peanut butter kisses with the consistency of wet cement? How would you vote?

 

Well, that’s it for this week. Chaplain Mike will be back at the con next week. See ya!

God’s Purpose and our Purpose

This morning I will be teaching to about 40 men in an addictions recovery program. I love these guys; they are very open, and very hungry spiritually. I will be going through Ephesians chapter 1, where the main idea is that our salvation is much broader than we usually understand, and also tied into God’s ultimate plan and purpose for the cosmos. I don’t have time or space to replicate that here, but I thought a few of you might find the following excerpt interesting. It’s an attempt to do two things. First, to connect our ultimate purpose with God’s cosmic purpose. Second, to describe our purpose not only in its ultimate form, but in the form of our life on this side of the grave. This may create more questions than answers, but that’s a good thing. Note, this is mainly based on an exegesis of Ephesians 1:3-11 and 22-23, along with parallel passages.

 

Knowing God’s ultimate purpose

Cosmically: to bring all things under Jesus, united in Jesus, perfected through Jesus, and to do this by means of a new humanity that is in perfect union with Jesus, perfected in the likeness of Jesus, and reflecting the wisdom, love, and power of Jesus to all parts of creation.

Personally: to make you a full part of this new humanity in Jesus, with a perfected body in a perfected New Creation, as you uniquely image Him throughout creation. This implies three areas:

  • Perfect union with Christ (and, through Him, with all the Godhead)
  • Perfect likeness to Christ
  • Perfect imaging of Christ

 

Finding our daily purpose based on God’s ultimate purpose illustrated

 

 

The Matrix of our Purpose

 

Seeking to make His purpose My Purpose in the Here and Now:

These questions are by no means designed to be a burden; rather, they are a tool for those who desire to grow into God’s purposes.

  1. To develop and deepen my individual relationship with God, as I partner with Him in removing the roadblocks in my life to a fuller union with Him.
  • What are my biggest roadblocks to increased intimacy with God?
  • What are some practical ways I can address these roadblocks?
  • Who can help me address these roadblocks?
  • What keeps me from addressing these roadblocks (what are the roadblocks to dealing with my roadblocks)?
  • How can the main problem I am facing right now actually draw me closer to God?
  • What one change could I make to grow closer to Christ?
  • Will I do that one thing?
  1. To cooperate with His Spirit in removing those things in my life that are not Christlike, and to seek my unique expression of Christlikeness.
  • What habits have I fallen into that I know are not Christlike?
  • In what ways has God shaped me to be unique in the way I follow Christ?
  • Are there goals (probably subconscious or at least unspoken) that I have in my life which actually draw me away from Christlikeness somehow?
  • Am I a little fearful of becoming more Christlike? If yes, what can I do about this?
  • What practical changes in my daily routines could I make that would help me become more Christlike?
  • Who can help me become more Christlike?
  • How can the sin, weakness or failure of (insert name of someone here___________) actually lead me to greater likeness to Jesus?
  1. To learn how to serve Him according to the way He has gifted me, my station in life, and my unique expression of Christlikeness.
  • Do I know my spiritual gifts?
  • If yes, what are they?
  • If not, what can I do to learn them?
  • Because of my life-situation right now, what unique ways can I serve God? Or, are there people that I have a unique opportunity to help spiritually?
  • In what ways has God shaped me to serve others in a way that most people could not?
  • What areas of wrong or injustice do I feel most angry about?
  • What areas of serving others do I get most excited about?
  • What would I have to do to serve in one of those two areas?

Based on all that God has shown you, what steps will you make in the days and weeks ahead to live in His purpose?

Did Velociraptor Taste Like Chicken?

Did Velociraptor Taste Like Chicken?

CNN has an article which raises this very question.  The question is raised, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, because researchers manipulated chicken embryos so that they would grow with the snout of a Velociraptor.  The report by scientists at Yale published in Evolution in September 2019, and summarized in this Popular Science article reveals that by introducing an inhibitor to stop the genetic signal that tells the embryo to build a bird beak, the scientists were able to make the chicken embryos grow a snout and palate that resembles a velociraptor.

Most of the public probably imagine a velociraptor from the Jurassic Park movies, which were probably representations of Deinonychus, a genus of dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur with one described species, Deinonychus antirrhopus. This species, which could grow up to 3.4 metres (11 ft) long, lived during the early Cretaceous Period, about 115–108 million years ago.  As noted in this article actual velociraptors were more like a turkey with teeth.  A turkey is not what the movie makers thought would be a scary predator.

Speculating what the meat tasted like is fleshed out (sorry!) in this article, which given that velociraptors were meat eaters themselves, probably means their meat would be like a cross between turkey meat and eagle or hawk meat i.e. gamey and tough.

What is more interesting to me is that the chicken genes could be manipulated in embryo to grow a snout like a velociraptor.  That to me, is very strong evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs.

As birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs, many of their features were modified.  Small theropods related to Compsognathus (e.g., Sinosauropteryx) probably evolved the first feathers. These short, hair-like feathers grew on their heads, necks, and bodies and provided insulation.  In theropods even more closely related to birds, like the oviraptorosaurs, we find several new types of feathers. One is branched and downy. Others have evolved a central stalk, with unstructured branches coming off it and its base. Still others (like the dromaeosaurids and Archaeopteryx) have a vane-like structure in which the barbs are well-organized and locked together by barbules. This is identical to the feather structure of living birds.

Another line of evidence comes from changes in the digits of the dinosaurs leading to birds. The first theropod dinosaurs had hands with small fifth and fourth digits and a long second digit. As the evogram above shows, in the theropod lineage that would eventually lead to birds, the fifth digit (e.g., as seen in Coelophysoids) and then the fourth (e.g., as seen in Allosaurids) were completely lost. The wrist bones underlying the first and second digits consolidated and took on a semicircular form that allowed the hand to rotate sideways against the forearm. This eventually allowed birds’ wing joints to move in a way that creates thrust for flight.

The bone walls became even thinner, and the feathers became longer and their vanes asymmetrical, probably also improving flight. The bony tail was reduced to a stump, and a spray of feathers at the tail eventually took on the function of improving stability and maneuverability. The wishbone, which was present in non-bird dinosaurs, became stronger and more elaborate, and the bones of the shoulder girdle evolved to connect to the breastbone, anchoring the flight apparatus of the forelimb. The breastbone itself became larger, and evolved a central keel along the midline of the breast which served to anchor the flight muscles. The arms evolved to be longer than the legs, as the main form of locomotion switched from running to flight, and teeth were lost repeatedly in various lineages of early birds.

Air sacs and pneumatic bones in birds – the bronchi of the respiratory system extend beyond the lungs into air sacs which in turn extend into many long bones. These air sacs aid flight by: reducing the bird’s weight.  There is strong evidence that theropod dinosaurs that predated the emergence of birds in the record had pulmonary systems like modern bird breathing systems. This means that the flow-through lung is not unique to birds, but was present in theropod dinosaurs before the evolution and emergence of birds.  See this article for example.

Now all that I just recounted is circumstantial evidence.  That evidence provides a plausibility pathway of evolutionary development that coincides with the timeline in history in which we find the fossil evidence.  Because this is historical evidence, it can only be inference to the most probable conclusion, like any forensic study.  Fans of crime dramas and police shows know the difference between direct evidence tying a suspect to the murder, like fingerprints on the murder weapons, DNA of the suspect on the victim, and so on, and circumstantial evidence that points to the suspect but does not prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Creationist like to exploit the distinction between circumstantial and direct evidence to argue that the similarities are merely coincidental, the result of common design rather than common descent.  See here for example and here for instance.  But the Yale experiments seems to rewind evolution, showing the genetic development from dinosaur snout to bird beaks exists in the chicken DNA.  Why, if you inhibit the beak development in embryo, does what develop precisely resemble the supposed ancestor?  Because the theropods WERE the actual ancestors seems the direct evidence conclusion.

Here is Answers-in-Genesis’ attempt to throw shade on the Yale study.  About the best they can say is:

To achieve a targeted embryonic defect like this, even one that so loosely and imperfectly resembles the bone structure of another sort of animal, required an enormous amount of research and experimentation. Insertion of the correct inhibitors at the correct spot in the embryo at precisely the right time in its development to inhibit specific genetic expression and achieve the desired effect was not accomplished through random processes.

In other words, the researchers had to work so hard to achieve the effect there is no way it could have happened naturally.  Hmmm… I wonder what crow tastes like.