Random Signage IIII

This beautiful clock was donated to Ohio University by the campus's Phi Beta Kappa chapter to commemorate the opening of the new student center. In case you haven't noticed yet, check out the number 4. Oops.

Reflections on Five Years of Studying

It's official, and they can't take it away from me! I now have the paper work to prove it, and no amount of red tape or bureaucracy can say otherwise! I'm actually pretty impressed that they sent it out so soon.

I look back now, and I'm so thankful for the opportunity God gave me to study. Not many people get to do that, and I know that I'm no one special and didn't deserve more than the next guy. I just pray that God would use it instead of allowing it to gather dusk and mothballs in my brain.

What's So Bad About Dogma?

I recently finished a book by Rick Richardson called Reimagining Evangelism. Essentially, Richardson wants to challenge laypeople, who have previously been weary of evangelism, to view the endeavor as an invitation to a spiritual journey. He rightly appeals to the distaste many have for the salesman feel evangelism has taken on in many quarters. He desires that the church put away its propositional and dogmatic view of the Gospel and contextualize it to a post-Christian, postmodern society. He suggests that we need to move away from Gospel as dogma to Gospel as story, from individual focus to community focus, and event orientation to journey orientation.

While much of what he had to say is so valuable in regard to how we relate Jesus to a society that thinks they know all there is to know about him, I fear that many are taking these views too far. I’m disheartened by many authors’ apparent desire to cast off propositional truth as a relic of a bygone modernist era. The very word dogma in our culture carries an overwhelmingly negative connotation. To be dogmatic is to be inflexible, arrogant, and intolerant. But, what if dogma (meaning sets of truths and proposition by which we form a worldview) still has a vital role to play in the life and witness of the church?

That’s not to say that dogma isn’t frequently wielded in order to gain power or maintain self-righteousness. Such uses are wrong, unbiblical, and probably the source of all the stigma surrounding the concept. We should all recognize, Christian and non-Christian, that no one has a monopoly on truth, and we should humbly confess that we too are on a spiritual journey to continually discover that truth. But, Christians should proclaim that there are certain things about God, humanity, and Christ that we can hold on to as right. We need to reject the ungraciousness and arrogance while at the same time lift up the uniqueness of Christ as the way to God. Is that possible, or are these two things mutually exclusive?

To be fair, I don’t think that Richardson would necessarily disagree with me. His desire simply is to encourage the church to contextualize the Gospel to a culture that doesn’t put much stock in propositions. In that respect, what he has to say is very valuable. But, many take this call for contextualization as a call for the rejection of all things “dogmatic”. Such a complete rejection doesn’t view the post-Christian culture critically and will end up making the same mistake that post-modern Christians claim modernist Christians have made. Plus, dogma when used correctly plays a vital role in centering the church on the truth of Jesus Christ.

Reflections on County Fairs

Today I got initiated into the wondrous world of the Carroll County Fair! Many of you may not know this about my Kathi, but she was a 4-H girl when she was younger. So, she was really excited to tread her old stumping ground. There were many things that I got to experience - show hogs, tractor pulls, elephant ears. Unfortunately, I couldn't convince Kathi to get the "Redneck Girl" temporary tattoo. We did eat a lot of fried foods though, so that's a bonus. Beyond the fried Oreos, pretty much all there was to do was look at unnaturally large tomatoes and ride vomit-inducing carnival rides. So, we only spent a few hours walking around. I give my first county fair experience a C+.

Reflections on Motorcyclists

Now that it's summer, all of the motorcycle riders are out. We were driving behind one the other day, and we noticed something weird. Each time this motorcyclist passed another motorcycle coming from the other direction, they would wave at each other. This happened five or six times, and it happened between seemingly polar opposite peoples - a 50 year old retiree riding a Honda cruiser waving at a tattooed, long-haired Harley rider. Very strange.

So, all you motorcycle enthusiasts, what's with the apparent camaraderie among riders? I know that numerous subcultures revolve around motorcycles, but isn't that a little ridiculous? Does owning a motorcycle really bring you into some worldwide fraternity? I mean, any Joe Sweatsock with a midlife crisis and a couple grand can get a motorcycle. I think I'm going to start waving at every Honda Accord that I pass on the road. We'll see what happens.

Reflections on Living History

We had a remarkable meeting the other day with an itinerant pastor and his wife from the Canton area. Kathi and I were referred to him by some friends because he was born and raised in Germany. We really had no idea what to expect from this lunch. The couple was actually much older than we had expected, and it turns he was born in 1925 and was drafted into the German Luftwaffe during World War Two! He grew up in a German Christian household in Poland and was a teenager when Hitler invaded that country in 1939.

The man just had some unbelievable stories! He was drafted in the middle of the War, and he was supposed to be put into the SS, but was drafted instead into the Luftwaffe after his father had intervened for him. He was trained as a medic and fortunately only saw the last few months of the conflict. He was soon taken as an American POW where he was secretly shipped to the United States to serve his time. After his release, he emigrated back to America where he went to Princeton seminary where he met his wife, and then taught at various Bible schools.

He had so many encouraging things to say about our desire to minister in Germany. His heart is that the Gospel would be revived in his home country. It just amazed us to see how God moved so miraculously to bring this child of His through war, prison, and into His service. It was a unique and powerful connection with a history that's slowly disappearing.

Reflections on High School Reunion

This weekend we went to Kathi's ten year high school reunion. I can't believe it's been ten years since we've been in high school. The sad thing was that by the looks of the reunion not much has changed. You could look around and see all of the cliques that existed ten years before. We pretty much kept to the few people from high school that Kathi hung out with. We heard that all the cool people went to someone's house afterwards where they drank the rest of the night. We ended up at a friend's hotel room where we played Settlers of Catan well into the evening. We're such nerds. Like I said, not much has changed.

Happy Indepedence Day

Here's what the deist, Thomas Jefferson, said about morality, religion, and government:

Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?

Jefferson never advocated for a Christian nation. Rather, he's saying that our rights and sense of liberty are derived from a belief in a loving, benevolent God who wishes every person to be set free. When we deny this belief, we take away the very foundation of our liberty, which only then leads to tyranny.

Reflections on Athens Trip

This weekend, we joined Randy, Sarah, Brian and Karin down in Athens for a nostalgic tour de force at our beloved alma mater. We walked around campus reminiscing of college, which was interrupted periodically by fits of jealousy over some of the newly constructed amenities students are enjoying nowadays. We ate lunch at the Bagel Street Deli, lounged at the Donkey, and stuffed ourselves at the ole Casa Nueva. The conversation was filled with memories and laughs that had all of us pining for college.

Combining this visit with the book I just finished has left me in a pensive mood. I’ve been reading The Cairo Trilogy, which is a generational novel written by Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz. It basically follows a Cairo family in the first half of the 20^th century from is heights through its disintegration. It made me so sad to watch these characters go through the glories of life only to end up right where everyone else ends up: on the verge of death. Time passes by so quickly.

There are so many things about college that I miss - things that have now become almost legendary among our friends. But, that time was only a vapor. We’ll blink and before you know it we’ll be 80 (Lord willing). It’s really sad. The only thing that keeps life from being a cruel joke is knowing that God has more for than simply good times. Knowing Him will be only thing we’ll be able to take with us when we die.

I hate to be a downer and all. There’s still so much to look forward to, so I don’t want to get bogged down in reminiscence. But, I wish I had drunk more liberally from those experiences when they were happening. Poignant lesson for the present.