Your Head Asplode

I saw this short video on facebook and thought I would share it.

And this was on the internet.  Not on Answers in Genesis.  Not on Ligonier.  Just cool and simple logic.  Only the fool says in his heart there is no God.

Here is an article about introversion that fascinated me.  Top 5 Things Introverts Dread about Church.  It was one of those articles that made me scratch my head.  Am I really as introverted as I think I am or am I just used to this from being in church my whole life?

5. “Welcome! Shake a hand, give a hug, share a name!”

It is kind of awkward, even in small churches, but ours at Trinity is actually long enough to get some good conversation in.  I get to group hug all my kids and hug a few others.  It's not as bad as when I normally go to something social and I hide in a corner eating something.  Usually between Sunday School and worship I just pace because I can't think of things to say to people.

4. “Chelsey, what do you think?”

Chelsey wrote the article on introversion.  I'm not Chelsey but I've been asked that.  Even worse, I now do that to people.  It does render me like a deer in the headlights but it's nice that someone cared enough to get my attention.  I honestly don't mind this one.

3. “Let’s get into groups and pray aloud and/or tell each other our deepest, darkest struggles.”

I actually love this!  This one really made me wonder if I'm still introverted.  I love sharing my feelings and I don't like to keep secrets with the world.  What you see is what you get.  I don't share every gory detail anymore, but it's good for the kids to know their youth pastor struggles too or has fun outside of church with friends. 

2. Spontaneous Public Prayer

Okay, I do hate this one, also known has Popcorn Prayer.  Random people pray in no particular order extemporaneously, and I'm in a daze wondering if I should say something or if I speak will it be at the same time other people speak.  Will I be interrupted because I mumble and someone can't hear me?  As a church leader I do pray publicly, but it's usually orderly and I've prepped myself mentally.  Or I'm asked to pray at a meal and I just pray like I normally pray by myself.  Conversing with God.  But, I'm still jittery about praying out loud.

1. ”You should be more…”

Wow, I can't believe people actually say this to introverts.  It's never been told me.  Oh wait, I did say that to another introvert who was being reclusive.  It's bad to be an introvert and not understand other introverts.

And I still say I'm introverted as I still sit in a corner eating at social events and clamming up.  But I am more extroverted than most introverts.  I love people.  I love parties.  I love reading alone.  And I try hard not to use my awkwardness as a reason to neglect the people in my life.

Earth is not that old

Normally RC Sproul is in agreement with Answers in Genesis on the issues of evolution.  He's a strong apologist for the inerrancy of Scripture against folks who follow the Documentary Hypothesis and the Jesus Seminar.  He has a wonderful video series on Ligonier about the Isms of the 20th century.

I was kind of disappointed in his answer to a question about the age of the universe.  It's like to make peace in 5 minutes he gave an answer that would please everyone, probably not pleasing anybody.  I wasn't pleased.  I mean, theologians do interpret Scripture wrong sometimes, or all the time, but probably because they compromise with non-believing scientists who will not believe despite the coolest of logic.  Nobody ever questioned the earth being more than 4000 years old until the uniformitarians took over the paradigm in the 19th century. 

These people don't want to believe that a holy God will wipe out a whole planet of sinful people with a flood, leaving only 8 people alive.  So they erase the Flood story as a myth and then have to exercise their creativity to explain why the earth looks so old with science experiments that can never properly test the age of something when the tester does not know how it started.

But people want to believe they are better than they are and that God is so much kinder than he is, and so they must decide that the uncomfortable parts of the Bible must be reinterpreted.  This is why we have so much easy believism these days.

Thankfully, realizing that 5 minutes is not long enough to properly defend a young earth, the same video linked to the next best guy to defend a literal understanding of Genesis.  Second to Ken Ham, here is Al Mohler.

The Three Stooges

I'm seriously thinking about going to see the new movie of the Three Stooges tomorrow.  It all started tonight when I went to see the Avengers with some friends, and it was sold out.  I thought since I didn't get to see a movie tonight, maybe I'll see a less popular movie by myself tomorrow when Dad has my brother.  I have no other plans other than possibly singing with the monks in their vespers tomorrow evening. 

I find it hard to understand that women wouldn't like the Three Stooges.  Kind of like Monty Python, there's usually a gender gap.  But I've loved them my whole life, my mom loved them, my brother's caretaker Mary likes them, but Dad goes off to see it with his girlfriend and announces to Facebook that women don't like the Three Stooges.  I've been in pain laughing at them so hard.  I think girls more my age like them.  Maybe ladies just aren't as lady-like any more.  But the Three Stooges movie is rated PG, and the Farrely brothers made it.  They can have some suggestive and crass movies like Dumb and Dumber, but Shallow Hal was a sweet movie, and I've seen other movies of them that were sweet.  And this one is rated PG.  I wonder how much garbage people cram into PG movies these days to impress the kids.  All I know is this would appeal to more my generation than to kids.

I guess I'll see what happens.

On Controversy: more babbleworthy post

This month’s Tabletalk magazine focuses on something I’m good at: controversy.  What I fail at however, is controversy to God’s glory, not so much my right answers.

First, Al Mohler notes that we need to call out heresy sometimes.  “The only way to avoid all controversy would be to consider nothing we believe important enough to defend and no truth too costly to compromise.”  At some point, we do need to defend our faith and the risk of losing friends.

The next four articles focus on a letter written by the hymn-writer, John Newton, called On Controversy.  Keith Mathison remarks how new Calvinists should be in a “cage stage” or simply locked in a cage until he stops being argumentative, when his conversations no longer degenerate into the “moral equivalent of the World Wrestling Federation.”  What mature believers should do is to consider whether the person in need of correcting is a believer or not.  Then we start by simply praying for him and to give him God’s teaching from Scripture, not your own opinion.

Robert Rothwell then advises to consider the people who will see your differences with the world.  Will they confuse meekness, humility, and love with never standing up for oneself?  We need to argue from God’s Word and not our own authority.

Then, Burk Parsons exhorts us to consider ourselves.  Are you engaging in controversy to be right, or are you trying to preserve the peace and unity of the church?

Ultimately, Sinclair Ferguson asks if we are arguing for God’s glory.  For myself, I need to pray at least one day before I decide to post some controversy on Facebook, and many times I don’t need to say anything.  I just need to share what God teaches in the Bible.

Lonely Nation

I start back on my Switchfoot blogging by just posting individual songs.  Today, is the first time I read Jon Foreman's meaning behind the song:

"Desperate times call for desperate measures. Over the course our time on the road as a band I have met so many amazing, beautiful, desperate, lonely people. We are the lonely nation. We are the disenchanted, the disillusioned- we are the remnant of lonely souls wanting more than anything that we can buy with this cold, hard cash. I wrote this song while we were playing a stretch of rock radio shows. I'd walk around near the back and just breathe in the loneliness- masses of lonely, scared kids. I remember thinking about the irony. Here you have this connected generation of online communities, IM, TM, myspace, and cell phones that grows more and more lonely every day. This is a song is still yearning, saying, "Don't settle, please, don't give up. Fight for only the true and the beautiful!"

How true this is!  When this Switchfoot CD came out in 2005, I was still mad at Switchfoot for going secular and hiding their religion.  It was also a year when many people were angry with George W. Bush for the war, making me angry with them.  I thought this song was about that.  I'm sure some of the other songs are about that.  At this point, however, Switchfoot is the only band who really knows what I go through.

I have a wonderful laptop with Facebook, Blogger, YouTube, and now Skype.  I can even e-mail.  I'm so lonely despite being connected to the world.  Maybe it's because now I put all my eggs in one basket and try to find fulfillment in my work, my friends, my church, when all of those are idols.  None of those are God.  This is why they don't satisfy, and this is why I'm lonely as I'm stuck on my couch.  Other people love the internet addiction, but it's enough that bloggers blog about that, on the internet.

The solution is to take my worries and concerns to God and find my identity in him.  If I get bogged down with work on the computer, I may need to get up and walk.  If I get bogged down over one person, I need to remember to call other people because there are other people.  If I get bogged down in some guy, I probably need to take a walk, and again call somebody else or just write it down in a journal and see how God will handle this.  My identity is in Christ, and for that reason, I don't need to be in this lonely nation.

Z is for Zip Line

So, I leaked into May.  Fine with me.  I decided to end with a zip line.  I've been on a junior version at Corn Dawgs where my feet even touched the ground.  I can't stay on the line any better than I can stay on monkey bars.  So with a new twist on an old cliche, I tells ya that life is like a zip line.  Not a roller coaster, but a zip line.

You are holding onto these handle bars, suspended over an abyss.  You cannot let go.  You need to get from one end of life to another.  Can you keep holding onto the bars?  At this point, I still can't tell where my handle bars will take me: whether I stay at Trinity, move somewhere or do something else.  Will I even survive to age 50?  I know I cannot hold onto the handle.  Thankfully, I have harness.  His name is Jesus.  He sends me the Holy Spirit to guide me through my decisions and so that I can directly communicate with my creator, and he strung up the line in the first place.  I just need to enjoy the ride.