Discovering the Real Jesus in Monroe

Here’s a few pictures from Sunday night at the Jazz Festival here in Monroe.

(Linda & I went to the Jazz Festival last night.)

Today is my 35th wedding anniversary with Linda, the love of my life. We’re going to spend part it at Maumee Bay State Park sitting in beach chairs soaking up sun reading books and talking.

“Some Israelis have described being moved almost to tears by a rare viewing of the Great Isaiah Scroll, the best preserved and most complete Dead Sea biblical scroll, on special exhibit this summer at the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum for the first time in 40 years.”

The nytimes article especially talks about the concern some Jews have about the growing disconnect modern Hebrew and ancient, biblical Hebrew. “In a country suffused with religious and historical symbolism, the linguistic link to the past has always evoked feelings of national identity, vindication and pride. Any erosion is bound to stir unease. “The Bible,” said [Hebrew language expert Ruvik] Rosenthal, “is first of all our connection to the land.””

(I took this picture of an Orthodox priest walking down a Jersusalem street.)

N.T. Wright, in Suprised By Hope, writes: “From Plato to Hegel and beyond, some of the greatest philosophers declared that what you think about death, and life beyond it, is the key to thinking seriously about everything else - and, indeed, that it provides one of the main reasons for thinking seriously about anything at all. This is something a Christian theologian should heartily endorse.” (6)

I agree. Answer the question “What happens after I die?” and you have answered the question “What is the meaning of my life.”

(Linda, a day after her birthday, as we at at a Mediterranean restaurant in Birmingham)

If I am divorced am I allowed to remarry? If you’re an actual Jesus-follower and either have been divorced or have people you care about that have been divorced, I bet this is an important question for you.

Here’s a couple of resources:

1. The best book to study re. this is: Remarriage after Divorce in Today’s Church: 3 Views

2. I’m going to preach on Luke 16:17-18 this coming Sunday at Redeemer here in Monroe.

Vanity Fair has an interesting essay written by Julian Sancton called “Why America Worships Superheroes.”
Currently superheroes are big. Nytimes film critic A. O. Scott calls it the “superhero surge.” Why the surge?

For one reason, says Sancton, we humans can relate to them. Sancton writes: “the heroes themselves have become more, well, complex. The films still pit good against evil, but with character actors like Robert Downey Jr. and Heath Ledger taking more risks, good has gotten more ambiguous and evil more unsettling.”

Further, just as we are struggling economically and politically and globally, so are our superheroes. “Hancock’s a drunk, Tony Stark’s a war-profiteer, and Bruce Wayne’s a rich jerk. Wouldn’t you be messed up if you were fighting, respectively, L.A. crime, the Taliban, and Al Qaeda in clown makeup?”

And then there’s Hellboy. “Hellboy’s inner demon is that he’s an outer demon. O.K., that’s not quite as easy to relate to, but he’s nonetheless an irritable, cynical hero, and audiences like that.”

Superheroes portray the ethos of the time. When Superman arrived to help us the world was simpler and black and white. Good was good and evil was evil. Now, there’s a lot more ambiguity and complexity. And this I believe is true. As we Jesus-followers like to say it’s a post-Christian world that we live in. The spiritual “air we breathe” is highly polluted.

But what about the whole superhero thing anyway, in itself? Sancton’s observation is that we need them. Quoting Hellboy’s director Guillermo del Toro: “There is still a longing for mythos, for a spiritual Pantheon. And in an era where we have enshrined materialism to such a degree and we have killed off every conceit that seems to be weak and based on religion—New Age, all those types of things—the only sort of acceptable mythology, I think, is superhero mythology.”

In short - superheroes are our gods and goddesses. It’s not that people actually believe Hellboy exists or that the Joker is around the corner and we’d better hope the psychologically struggling Batman sees the bat-signal we throw up and is in an emotional state to respond to it. It’s that most of us, arguably all, have this deep, inner need for someone or something more to come to our rescue. For me, it’s the Jesus-story, with the main difference being Jesus actually came to deliver the oppressed. Perhaps, as C.S. Lewis thought, the superhero stories, and even his own Narnia books and his friend Tolkien’s trilogy, were reflections of a hope God placed in wach of us and responded to in history.

(Good Hart. Michigan)

Tonight at 8 PM Voice of the Martyrs and Charisma Magazine will be talking with Bob Fu, a Chinese pastor who experienced persecution himself inside China, and now leads a group helping the persecuted church in China.

You can watch, listen, and join the discussion here.

(Linda, in Korazin, Israel, Feb 2008)

Today Linda is 59 years old. I’m also 59 - last April! We’re not ashamed to say this. Our hearts and spirits are growing newer and younger every day!

Linda is the most beautiful 59-year-old I have ever seen. And her beauty is not only physical. Linda is a deeply spiritual person, a phenomenal listener, a non-judgmental, loving, imperfect (she’ll admit to this), passionate, real Jesus-follower. That God gave her to be my life companion astounds me. On August 11 we’ll have been married 35 years.

Last night we went for a date to walk around Levis Commons in Perrysburg - very cool! A beautiful evening, a good meal, some Starbuck’s for me and a little chocolate for her, then sitting on a bench on the grassy traffic island listening to music and talking and feeling the cool, low humidity breeze. Linda said, “This is just a perfect summer night!”

Perfect for me because God gave me Linda to share my life with. Happy birthday to my friend, sister, lover.

(Green Lake, Wisconsin)

I was trained in an evangelical Christian environment. For all I received from my teachers and pastors I will forever be grateful.

Yet, we’re all learners, and this includes me. I feel I’m learning new things about God and Jesus every day! One of the most important things I’ve learned in the past few years is that my evangelical training left me with an incomplete Gospel. I learned how to proclaim God’s Word, but was not trained or mentored in demonstrating God’s Word in love and power.

I now see that I was taught only a half-Gospel. I do not mean to criticize my teachers at all. I’m convinced that there’s not one of us who has the Gospel exactly right in all areas, to include moi. Nevertheless, it is abundantly clear that the way Jesus brought in the Kingdom was 2-fold: He proclaimed the good news of the Kingdom of God, and then he demonstrated it by doing things like healing and delivering people from demonic oppression.

George Ladd, former New Testament professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, is one of the most influential evangelical scholars of the late 20th century. Here’s how Ladd explains this in his excellent book The Gospel of the Kingdom: “Our Lord’s ministry and announcement of the Good News of the Kingdom were characterized by healing, and most notably by the casting out of demons. He proclaimed the Good News of the Kingdom of God, and He demonstrated the Good News of the Kingdom of God by delivering men from the bondage of Satan.” (47)

Of course. And then Jesus told his followers to do the same. I have now concluded that persons who devalue the importance of healing and deliverance ministry have devalued the real Gospel. They have only half a Gospel. If you are a theological kind of person, one reason for this devaluing in evangelicalism is because of the influence of that nonbiblical theory known as dispensationalism.