becoming

Blogging will resume in mid-May.

Peace be with you all. 

The free book from Eisenbrauns just arrived today. Wow, it is not an April-fool joke afterall.

Looking at the table of content, it seems very promising. A good example of biblical and doctrinal theology working together. Daniel Hardy has some good words to say about it in the foreword.

But I decided not to take it to Brazil with me and save it for some time later. It would be too distracting an environment to engage in such serious work.

Thanks to James Spinti for the giveway. I am really impressed of the generosity of Eisenbrauns. US$31 just like that…. wow…

I will head for Brazil again for short term mission this coming Sat (Apr 28th). This is the first trip this year and the 4th trip of our church to São José. We have established a partnership with the local church there.

This time, Aunite Ida and myself will have 2 main objectives. One is to continue our work in the area of discipleship among the lay leaders, so that they can fulfill the task that the Lord has entrusted them. The other is to prepare for our second team (July) arrival so that they can host an English camp for the teens over there and evangelize.

Please pray for Ida and me that we will be healthy both physically and spiritually during the trip. Also pray that God will protect and take care of our families when we are away.

We will come back on May 12. 

Shane Hipps on moving toward, against, and away from the culture:

I make a distinction between three different kinds of consumerism. One is mainstream consumerism; the dominant hegemony that happens in our culture. Mainstream consumerism is mega. Walmart exemplifies this kind of consumerism, as does the mega-church. Boomer consumerism is mainstream consumerism.

Then you have counter consumerism, which is savviness. They are aware that Walmart and [Microsoft] Windows are trying to dominate, and they resist just like they resist mega-churches. But the odd thing is they’re no less consumers. They’re just counter consumers. A counter consumer buys Apple. It is absolutely consumer driven. They are consuming an identity that says we’re different; an alternative from the rest of you.

It’s youth rebellion. A reaction against what you’re parents like.

Yep. Instead of Starbucks you’ll go to the independent coffee shops. But it’s still coffee shops and it’s still consuming to form an identity. The emerging church is largely counter consumer. It’s really edgy, hip and trendy. But it’s no less consumeristic.

The third type is anti-consumerism. That is what I would call my context. Mennonites resist both the hip Apples and the hegemonic Windows. They would rather not have a computer. They’d rather make their own clothes, sow their own quilts, build their own homes. They’re very, very, very careful not to consume. That’s anti-consumer.

Read the whole thing here. 

特別留意作者說的所謂Counter consumerism。事實上，這種自以為拒絕世俗，但換過來只是「換湯不換藥」的行為，在教會中卻比比皆是；例如：對流行音樂會的藐視，換過頭來卻是以「敬拜讚美」的形式讓教會中人得著同樣的亢奮；這一邊對時尚品牌、明星的對持，另一邊在教會中卻建立對另類「品牌」、「星級講員」的傾慕。呼籲對消費文化作出批判，卻又於各大福音會議和奮興聚會中以鋪天蓋地的方式促銷不同的書刊、課程。

對象或者換了，但心態行為其實並沒有兩樣。

更糟糕的是我們還以為這就是所謂的「入世而不屬世」了。 

Anyone who ever happened to catch an episode of the Big Comfy Couch remembers the all-important 10 second tidy that finished up each playtime. This was obviously intended to engrain the idea that playtime is all well and good but without taking responsibility for your toys, you'll soon end up with an unpleasant mess.

Wish there was something you could do about it? Enter the City's 20-Minute Makeover, scheduled for this Friday (April 20th) at 2 p.m.

The city will provide you with a garbage bag and a single glove, which you need to pick up from a Pizza Pizza, Tim Horton's or McDonald's in the 416, and if you're taking part as an individual all you have to do with your collected rubbish is dispose of it during a normal garbage pick up (normal limits apply).

[HT: BlogTO] 

教會作爲「聖潔的國度」並不意味著我們就要與現世社會文化割絕，或拼棄其他對社會文化有利的影響因素，反而我們要實踐耶穌所教導的「在世」而「不屬世」的生命（約17:14-19）。換言之，就是用真理使之成聖，積極在文化中發展信仰與生活的元素，包括愛護環境、善用資源、對文化藝術的欣賞和選用等。更具體的，就是參與社會關懷行動和服務，以背十字架的精神與市民大衆一起承擔弱小群體的一切痛苦，藉行動參與對抗罪惡的勢力，這正是21世紀基督的教會應有的福音見證的平衡生活。

這位姊妹沒有即時離開並不是因為她不覺痛，而是因為當天她在團契中負責分享，所以她選擇完成了她的事奉才離開。

一個已屆八旬之年的老姊妹的堅持，讓我不得不嚴肅地自問：「事奉神究竟是怎樣一回事」。

也請你為她剛接受了盆骨手術後的康復過程禱告。 

Just listen to what Mark Roberts has to say first:

Though I’m not surprised, I’m grieved once again by the tendency of some to use such a crisis for personal or political advantage. Predictably, both sides of the gun lobby were quickly using this tragedy to argue for or against gun ownership. This is an important debate, to be sure, and one we must have as a nation. But, in my opinion, now is not the time for punditry, but for prayer.

……Help us, dear Lord, to learn what we must learn from this crisis. Give us hearts open to You. Keep us from using the pain of others to manipulate or callously advance our personal agendas. Help us to listen to each other, and most of all to You.

Thank You for being a God who is not watching us from a distance. Thank You for entering into the pain and sorrow of this broken world. Thank You for being present with us when we suffer. Thank You for giving us hope when all seems hopeless, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Yes, we really need to learn to take time mourning and praying; and refuse trivial answers or healing on the surface.

Okay, just to make everybody even more confused, here comes the Jesus of Pope Benedict XVI (Ratzinger), adding to the pile of "Jesus-es" of Sanders', Borg's, Crossan's, Dunn's, Wright's, Theissen's….. and the list goes on…..

And it seems the words of caution from Bauckham continues to linger in the air:

There is a very serious problem here that is obscured by the naive historical positivism that popular media presentations of these matters promote, not always innocently. All history — meaning all that historians write, all historiography — is an inextricable combination of fact and interpretation, the empirically observable and the intuited or constructed meaning. In the Gospels we have, of course, unambiguously such a combination, and it is this above all that motivates the quest for the Jesus one might find if one could leave aside all the meaning that inheres in each Gospel's story of Jesus. One might, of course, acquire from a skeptical study of the Gospels a meager collection of extremely probable but mere facts that would be of very little interest. That Jesus was crucified may be indubitable but in itself it is of no more significance than the fact undoubtedly so were thousands of others in his time. The historical Jesus of any of the scholars of the quest is no mere collection of facts, but a figure of significance. Why? If the enterprise is really about going back behind the Evangelists' and the early church's interpretation of Jesus, where does a different interpretation come from? It comes not merely from deconstructing the Gospels but also from reconstructing a Jesus who, as a portrayal of who Jesus really was, can rival the Jesus of the Gospels. We should be under no illusions that however minimal a Jesus results from the quest, such a historical Jesus is no less a construction than the Jesus of each of the Gospels. Historical work, by its very nature, is always putting two and two together and making five — or twelve or seventeen.

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, p.4

[HT: Jim, Chris]