Major League Evangelism

I’m not a huge baseball fan, but I usually tune in for the World Series. I really don’t care who wins this year, but I’ve got more friends pulling for the Cards than for the Tigers. This forces me to root for the Tigers. Besides, if the Tigers are good enough for Thomas Magnum they’re good enough for me.

The other day I was flipping through the channels and Major League was on. In high school, we watched this movie so many times we had the dialogue down cold. One of my favorite scenes is when Pedro Cerrano starts doing voodoo in the locker room. When his teammates check it out, the following evangelistic conversation ensues:

Pedro Cerrano: Bats, they are sick. I cannot hit curveball. Straightball I hit it very much. Curveball, bats are afraid. I ask Jobu to come, take fear from bats. I offer him cigar, rum. He will come.
Eddie Harris: You know you might think about taking Jesus Christ as your savior instead of fooling around with all this stuff.
Pedro Cerrano: Jesus, I like him very much, but he no help with curveball.
Eddie Harris: You trying to say Jesus Christ can’t hit a curveball?

Taking God Seriously

I recently heard Miroslav Volf say in an interview that the atheist/skeptic/doubter who rails against God because of the problem of suffering and evil in the world may actually be closer to God than some Christians.

Is it possible that the atheist/skeptic/doubter is taking the claim about God being good and loving more seriously than Christians who never challenge or question God, but instead sit around singing “God is so good to me” while the world around them goes up in flames?

Hypernymous

Here’s a paragraph from Rollins’ How (Not) to Speak of God that’s worth thinking about:

What is beginning to arise from the discussion so far is the idea that God ought to be understood as radically transcendent, not because God is somehow distant and remote from us, but precisely because God is immanent. In the same way that the sun blinds the one who looks directly at its light, so God’s incoming blinds our intellect. In this way the God who is testified to in the Judeo-Christian tradition saturates our understanding with a blinding presence. This type of transcendent-immanence can be describe as ‘hypernymity’. While anonymity offers too little information for our understanding to grasp (like a figure on television who has been veiled in darkness so as to protect their identity), hypernymity gives us far too much information. Instead of being limited by the poverty of absence we are short-circuited by the excess of presence. The anonymous and the hypernymous both resist reduction to complete understanding, but for very different reasons.

So, God is concealed even as he is revealed. The very revelation of his glory conceals it at the same time. God remains hidden and mysterious, not because he’s withdrawn his presence from us, but because He is fully present.

The House Unity Built

I’ve been asked a number of times what I hoped would come out of the reconciliation and unity celebrations that occurred at events like the Tulsa Workshop and NACC. I kept saying I hoped it would lead to some concrete demonstrations of unity beyond getting together for a worship assembly.

I’m really proud of some dedicated folks here at Garnett and at the Cedar Ridge Christian Church who have made this hope a reality. Garnett and Cedar Ridge are building a Habitat House together.

Jesus told us that in order for a house to weather a storm, it has to be built on a strong foundation. This new house going up in north Tulsa is being built upon the foundation of peacemaking, love, reconciliation, and unity. I’d like to see the big bad wolf try to blow it down.

habitat for humanity, NACC,

CSI Sermon

Did you watch CSI last night? If so, at the very end you heard some heavy duty reflection on morality that is uncommon for a popular TV show. Grissom got downright preachy and it was good.

Update: Here’s the gist of what Grissom said:

Our culture preaches, you shouldn’t be ashamed of anything you do anymore.In a city that’s built on the principle that theres no such thing as guilt.So without conscience there’s nothing to stop you from killing someone, and evidently you don’t even have to feel bad about it.