:: in.a.mirror.dimly :: A theology and culture blog with the Bible in one tab and a news feed in the other.

Participation and empowerment are not typically associate with worship, but I think they are key elements in what God’s up to in the church today. In a sense you could say that God is empowering people to meet him in both community and alone so that they can be humbled and filled with his power. Nevertheless, there is an overall feeling of powerlessness in the church in which we tend to assume that we cannot approach God, whether he’s too angry, disappointed, or demanding.

While we cannot expect to remedy all wrongs in the church by tweaking a service, we can change these gatherings and those that are more informal to create a space where we can encounter God. During worship I have noticed a dynamic at play in which there is a strong individual act of encountering God, but there is a simultaneous interaction with the whole group. In a sense, as all engaged in worship draw closer to God, they are somehow drawn together. I have been encouraged and filled by simply watching another person worship. It was a strange connection that rose above the private/public dichotomy we often have. Somehow authentic worship has to be both.

JR Briggs and Ryan Bolger have each posted on worship and these ideas of participation and empowerment.

Ryan tackles it head on, offering some practical insight:

“Taking my cues from the Alt Worship network in the UK, new forms of worship do not equate to candles and coffee, videos and tables, stations and art. Rather, it is about access and inclusion. Who was invited and empowered to create and participate in worship?”

JR takes the more round-about route by comparing worship to March Madness. Trust me, it’s worth reading. I HATE basketball, but I persevered and found that he wraps it up nicely.

“When people grasp this March Madness idea of ownership as royal priests they will begin to see their lives as be missionally-minded, thus regaining the mission-mindset that has been lost for quite some time. We must shift our ministry paradigm from the NBA playoffs approach to the March Madness mindset. When we do this, people will be able to catch the vision of ownership and will begin to see themselves as being a significant participant in the Church, rather than merely attending it and watching it pass them by.”

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This morning I wanted to take a little tour of the world via my bloglines news reader . . .

Afghan on trial for Christianity: “The trial of Abdul Rahman reflects the struggle between religious hardliners and reformists over what shape Islam will take in Afghanistan.”

You Are What You Post: My thanks to Jordon Cooper on this one. I don’t think that kids realize how serious it can be to post embarrassing information on the internet. When I was 14 or 15 my friend and I published some stupid story for his fledgling web zine. The article is still out there somewhere. It’s amazing to see what seemed a good idea over 10 years ago.

40 Ways that TypePad Could Rock Even Harder

Grow Your Own Oil, U.S.: Bio-oil can be made from almost any organic material, including agricultural and forest waste like corn stalks and scraps of bark. Converting the raw biomass into bio-oil yields a product that is easy to transport and can be processed into higher-value fuels and chemicals.

Vintage Saints: Saint Patrick: A well-written narrative of “Saint” Patrick. “Technically, Saint Patrick is not even a saint as he was never canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. Additionally, Patrick was not even Irish. Rather, he was an Englishman who was a Roman citizen that spoke Latin and a bit of Welsh.”

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Myself and roughly 150 people enjoyed an afternoon with former ambassador and CPA director Paul “Jerry” Bremmer. The event was held at the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vt that was just voted the top bookseller by Publisher’s Weekly. Quite an accomplishment for a small-town store.

Bremmer gave about an hour long talk on his new book, My Year in Iraq. I took very thorough notes which I will soon share below. But first, a few thoughts. Bremmer was thrown into a caldron that was ripe with failure. When you think of home many Bush appointees have failed, need I mention “Brownie” and the Katrina fiasco, it is amazing that Bremmer is not made into a scapegoat. He in fact conveyed a sense of compassion for Iraq, admitted some of his mistakes, and mentioned some issues where he differs from the White House (though he did toe the party line mostly). He opened the floor for questions and did answer, albeit simplistically at times, the hard questions tossed at him.

I came away from the talk with a favorable impression of Bremmer. It seems that he did the best he could with the situation. Of course he chose the statistics to whip out, so who knows if there are some negative numbers to throw against him. But nevertheless, it does not seem like he made things worse in Iraq and that he often made things better.

What I found most interesting was his compassion for the people who have endured and continue to endure so much. He mentioned that the whole nation may be suffering from some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder. This is something that I find fascinating and is worth exploring. It may be a huge part of the recovery process for a nation that was broken over a 40 year period.

Without further ado, my notes:

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The Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, VT will be hosting America’s former proconsul/ambassador to Iraq in the 14 months following the overthrow Saddam’s regime. He will speaking at 2 pm regarding his new memoir, My Year in Iraq. It should be an interesting talk and I plan on being right there in the thick of it. I hope to hear him speak frankly about the situation in Iraq and expect to hear that things there are a lot worse and a lot better than we thought. We’ll see if I’m right.

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The quote of the day on my Google home page is by G. K. Chesterton:

“The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.”

Very insightful. What’s even better is that Google provides a link to a page full of his quotes. Chesterton had a lot to say concerning a variety of topics. Here are a few of my favorites:

Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.

If there were no God, there would be no Atheists.

It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.

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It all began when I was reading Jordon Cooper’s blog one day. He was talking about not being interested in blogging while at work. He only carried his Moleskine notebook with him to take notes and write out ideas.

It intrigued me. I looked into the moleskine web site and found that this notebook used by the likes of Hemingway and Picasso had vanished in the 20th Century and has recently been brought back by a Spanish company. It looked really neat and right up my alley, but wasn’t quite right for me at the time.

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The funny thing about the doctrine of sola scriptura that places so much authoritative weight on the Bible is that you really cannot make a book authoritative in and of itself. Books must be read. And here is where the fallible human component comes in. Do we really think that we can just pick up the Bible, read a passage, and then plan accordingly? Who determines what the Bible says and how it functions in authority any way? Was the Bible meant to be considered as authoritative as we have made it out to be? Is there any authority outside of the Bible for Christians?

This leaves us with a few avenues to explore:
What kind of documents do we find in the Bible and how are we to understand them?
What kind of authority was the Bible meant to have?
Who determines what the Bible has to say?
What is the Bible’s role in the church today?

There may be more questions, but I think that’s a good start. Unless we can faithfully deal with this issue, we are left with a mess like those described by Rachelle.

Sola Scriptura - The Scriptures Only (a disputed translation)

Sola Scriptura is a doctrine that guided the church away form the harmful encroachment of superstition and abusive ecclesiastical rule. When the authority of the church obscurred the message of the Bible, bold theologians and lay people advocated a simple doctrine that cut away the falsehood and deception that had shrouded the church with a dense fog.

Indeed the scriptures burned away the haze and confusion that had accumulated over centuries. The authority wielded by the church was never the aim of Jesus, and therefore, sola scriptura did its work with deadly efficiency. The problem is that the church fought off one extra-biblical doctrine (well, all doctrine is kind of extra-biblical or second order in nature, but that’s another discussion. see Beyond Foundationalism for more on that),the authority of church government, with another doctrine not found in the Bible. What would Jesus do with that?
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<%image(20060314-israel_jericho_map203.gif|203|152|israel)%> Things seem to be deteriorating in Israel and Palestine very quickly. It’s amazing how both sides, who claim to be working toward a resolution to the conflict, keep stirring up anger and violence. This time, it appears that Israel is the aggressor. The BBC reports this morning:

Israelis storm Palestinian prison

“Israeli troops have stormed a prison in the West Bank town of Jericho, demanding the handover of a Palestinian militant Ahmed Saadat.

Mr Saadat, who Israel blames for the assassination of a minister in 2001, has refused to surrender.”

The article goes on to say, “Hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza have been demonstrating against the Israeli operation in Jericho. Palestinian militants from the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades in Gaza City have warned US and UK nationals to leave the Palestinian territories immediately.”

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I just added a few more links to the side and hope to keep them coming. Of particular note among the recent additions is purgatorio. If you have not been there yet, you need to check it out. The “Divine Vinyl” category is laugh-out-loud funny. You never quite know what to expect. It’s one of the most creative blogs around.

While looking over the new non-fiction books, I came across a book with the title: Real Life, Real Love by a priest named Albert Cutie.

I confess, I didn’t pick up the book and read it over. I didn’t have the stomach for it. Where do I begin?

The title has something about “7 Paths to a Strong and Lasting Relationship.” I’m not a big fan of “steps.” Maybe you can list some principles or patterns, but steps???? Ick. Sounds like the fast track to divorce.

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I’m still rummaging through First John this morning in my attempt to keep my Greek fresh:

1Joh 1:5 And this is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.
6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him and [yet] walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth;
7 but if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. (NASB)

If anything, translating a passage makes you read it slowly and notice little details that never would have jumped out before. For instance, John is writing in the first person plural. He consistently keeps talking about what he and others have “heard,” and then goes on to share it with his readers who are in the second person plural: “you all”.

It was also interesting to observe that the focus on verse six is our actions. The focus is on fellowship here, both with one another and with God. Living in selfish sin puts us at odds with God and his people. Beliefs or proclamations do not negate our actions. And when it comes down to truth, the focus of verse six is doing or practicing the truth.

I also can’t help but feel that fellowship with Christ and walking in the light (or obedience) are integrally connected.

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<%image(20060312-March 11, 2006 023.jpg|350|262|Saratoga)%> On a warm sunny day we headed off to Saratoga, NY for a hike around the Saratgoga battlefield, the site of the famous defeat of the British forces under John Burgoyne in 1777 during the American Revolution. Read about the battle in Wikipedia.

According to my friend Jon who is quite in the know about American history, Saratoga is one of the best preserved battlefields. We were expecting just a bunch of fields, but the park is really neat. There are rolling fields, the remnants or some earthworks, large clumps of forest, and spectacular views of the Hudson River valley with some low-lying mountains off to the East. It’s not a bad place to spend the day.

The picture with the canon looking over the field is Breyman’s redoubt. It was a key position in the British lines held by regular Hessians. While being attacked on the front, they were flanked on their left by Benedict Arnold and a group of American troops he had rallied. The canon is part of the Hessian lines and looks out to where the frontal assault came from.

<%image(20060312-March 11, 2006 018.jpg|350|262|saratoga2)%> We hiked on a 4.5 mile trail around part of the battlefield, but will have to come back sometime to drive out to the other parts of the battlefield that were not on the loop. Even if you don’t know the history, you can pick up enough by taking a map along and walking around the trail. Check out the Saratoga National Park web site for more details about visiting.

Of course it wouldn’t be a day on the town without a visit to a used book store. And we hit one in the little town of Schuylerville . . .

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Can it really be mud season? The snows have been plugged up, the rains have descended, and mud has resulted. The locals tell me this is one of the worst Vermont winters in recent memory. In order to make the best of things, we’re heading to Saratoga, NY today. We hope to walk around on the battle field and then head into town. They have a Borders AND some ethnic food. Two things I miss while living in Southern Vermont.

In other randomness, I have made an effort to get back into Greek and Hebrew a little bit these days with the help of Gramcord. If any prof. gets down on this program, he/she is nuts. It’s the best way to keep your languages going without having to spend hours looking up vocab and parsing. It’s a good lay-level tool.

I’m going easy on myself, so I hit First John this morning.

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<%image(20060310-Bailey Revolution.jpg|300|255|bailey revolution)%> Bailey our biting bunny has now recovered from his neuter operation and has free roam of the house. He has not begun tearing around the living room like Eva, our other rabbit. He seems to prefer slowly hopping around and sniffing EVERYTHING. He also likes to rub his neck on things so he can leave his scent on them. This drives Eva nuts. She has to go around the room and re-sniff everything that she had already checked out. This weekend we hope to begin bonding the two of them.

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