Halloween - Holy or Defiled?

This last Sunday (Oct 30th) was a sad day for me at Calvary Christian Assembly, as we finished off our session on Romans and I said goodbye to friends who love studying God's Word. (At the same time, I was excited to see the love of my life again, as Rosemarie returned from a three-week doctoral research and studies stint in Springfield.) We blazed through Romans 14-16, and spent some time on the issue of "disputable matters" in chapter 14.

As a child growing up in a quite conservative German church in Canada, I was trained to see Halloween as an example of depravity and evil, or at least that's what I recall. This was by no means the view of all believers in our small town, and I have a vague recollection of doing some trick-or-treating, but have difficulty figuring out how that happened! In the course of our class I brought up, in passing, the issue of Halloween as a "disputable matter".

It is good to think and to learn. One of the things which I had read just prior to our session was the Internet Monk rant on Halloween, presented by someone who had grown up in a likewise conservative setting, but had a very different recollection of Halloween: fun without any taint of the occult. And then I read this article by David Mathis on why Luther chose Oct 31st as the day for the nailing of the 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg: it was a day that celebrated the triumph of good over evil, among other things.

Hmmm... that's not what I had understood growing up, and yet I like that idea. Not as an excuse to have fun, but as a true expression of Romans 12:21 - "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." Whatever your view on this particular day, may we be those who overcome evil with good!

Any thoughts to share in the comments?

Governments and Capital Punishment

This last Sunday, our topic was the interaction of citizens with their government, coming from our discussion of Romans 13 at Calvary Christian Assembly in Seattle. Two blog postings somewhat "framed" this for me: before our discussion, I had just read this post quoting John Frame on the ChurchLeaders blog, where he says that "The mission of the church was nothing less than to establish a new world order." Just this morning I read a post from Ben Witherington on governments and capital punishment. He argues that while governments may commit acts of capital punishment (and this could be done rightly or wrongly), Christians should not be involved in such.

So, what do you think?

Series on Theology at Renton New Life

I had a great time at Renton New Life last night, with Pastor Troy Jones and a "small group" of about 100 avid students of theology - it was a lot of fun! We talked about the basis, benefits and dangers, and tasks and tools of theology. As noted by a number of people, understanding that things we believe to be true can fit into three categories was a significant take-away. These categories are

• Dogma - something essential to the faith. Denying this is in essence excluding yourself from the classification of "Christ-followers."
• Doctrine - something important to a specific group of believers (church, denomination, etc.) but not essential to the faith. Significant disagreement here might mean you'd be better off with a different group of worshipers, but doesn't mean you're not a Christian.
• Opinion - something of interest to you, but definitely not worth dying for.

Next week we'll be tackling theology proper: what we understand about God from his revelation of himself in his works and his word.

If you're a part of that group (or are interested in theology and want to enter the conversation), use the comments feature of this blog to facilitate interaction. I'm looking forward to learning with you!

A New Series: Romans at Calvary Christian Assembly

This last Sunday I had the privilege of starting on another Bible study at Calvary Christian Assembly in Seattle (http://www.ccassembly.org/). What a wonderful group! There were a number of us (over a hundred) who are all lovers of the Word and who love to study and discuss. Join us either in person (9:15am, Sundays, until the end of October 2011), or by following the recordings given below.

The first session was on the nature of Sin, and how it needs to be distinguished from and results in "sins".

Here are a few links, if you'd like to follow the conversation:

Subscribe to video and audio in iTunes
Subscribe to video and audio as RSS Feed
Subscribe to audio (only) in iTunes
Subscribe to audio (only)  as RSS Feed

(Un)Limited Atonement

Had an opportunity this last Sunday to speak at Renton New Life as part of a series about Thinking Scripture - Thinking Inside the Box. Had a blast - what a great community and a great team!

A link to the audio for my talk on (Un)Limited Atonement is available at http://www.newliferenton.com/index.php?nid=14711&s=gl, as well as links to other talks in the series. We have a great God!

God's Vigor

Our conversation this morning was focused on Hebrews 11 (remember, the podcasts are available at
itpc://panopto.northwestu.edu/Panopto/Podcast/Podcast.ashx?courseid=1c9436a0-d6b2-48ec-869d-ace7f4113d9c&type=mp4 for iTunes and
http://panopto.northwestu.edu/Panopto/Podcast/Podcast.ashx?courseid=1c9436a0-d6b2-48ec-869d-ace7f4113d9c&type=mp4 for  other RSS feed readers.

We also discussed a portion of Chesterton's book Orthodoxy, and here's the part I quoted:

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead.  For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.  But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.  It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.  It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical ENCORE.


May your day be glorious and blessed!

March 13th class; the Lewis and Clark air rifle

A reminder that we will not be meeting on Sunday, March 13th, as Rosemarie and I will be in Memphis, presenting papers at the Society for Pentecostal Studies conference.

Today's class session is now up and available (links in the Dec 19, 2010 posting on this blog). Looks like I forgot to hit the screen capture box, so that it's audio only - sorry!

Also, I had promised to provide a link to a video regarding the Girandoni air rifle used on the Lewis and Clark expedition. You can see this at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pqFyKh-rUI&fmt=18. If you're wondering what this has to do with Hebrews, well, the answer is not too much, directly. However, I had brought up in class that we tend to focus on things that interest us (as we see in the descriptions in Heb 9:1-5), and how in the UK they have many more periodicals than we have here in North America, with all sorts of specialized magazines. Included in these are a number on air rifles, and my rather scattered mind then turned to this video I had just seen, and I mentioned that, and now here we are, with a link in this Bible study blog. Okay, so my brain tends to do some rather random things - sorry!

Blessings on all of you!