Found this on my coffee cup this afternoon…
"In reality, hell is not such an intention of God as it is an invention of man. God is love and people are precious. Authentic truth is not so much taught or learned as it is remembered. Somewhere in your pre-incarnate consciousness you were loved absolutely because you 'were'. Loved absolutely, and in reality, you still are! Remember who you are!"
-- Bishop Carlton Pearson
Author, speaker, spiritual leader and recording artist
Huh?
My Daughter is going to love Lightning Bugs.
I was lounging in the backyard tonight reading Leonard Sweet's book, The Gospel According to Starbucks and as the daylight began to fade away (my reading light too) I decided to take a pause from my reading, close the book, sit back and reflect a bit on Sweet's work.
As I sat, pondering, a lightning bug flew near, illuminated bottom and all…then it hit me…not the bug…the light bulb…over my head I mean…errr….
Noël is going to love Lightning Bugs.
I can just imagine her face now…"Wow Daddy!"
And why shouldn't she be amazed, they're amazing little buggers.
Growing up I remember my mom telling us, as we awed over the fiery creatures, when she was a youth her and her siblings used to capture them, toss them to the ground and smear them with their feet to write out their names…(my uncles' ideas I'm sure but c'mon, where's the anti-cruelty society when you need them?)
I remember one night, as a young adult, driving to Tulsa to go on vacation with a friend, right at dusk, when the conflagrating Coleopterans emerge from their (where do they emerge from anyways?) I was driving down the interstate when…WHAM one unfortunate Fire Buttom met his (or her) end by smashing into my windshield, leaving a wondrous orange smear across the glass of my 1994 pickup. I "wow-ed" over this for the next 10 to 15 miles!
But no, this blog entry isn't about the old adage: Sometimes you're the windshield…sometimes you're the bug. This entry is about being amazed.
While Sweet's book may just be the Emerging Churches (or at least Sweets) attempt at the Purpose Driven Life I have to admit that so far I like this book.
The thesis of Sweet's new book (actually came out in January of this year) is that Starbucks has taken "an old, unexcited standby – hot, dark liquid in a cup – and made it an EPIC beverage that millions of people feel they can't live without" (pg 22). Sweet gleans from the business that has us opening our wallets for $4 a cup coffees, which we even stand in line for, to draw out his EPIC life (Experiential, Participatory, Image Rich, Connective) principles and encourage us to live our lives not according to duty and guilt but to live with a "Grande Passion."
So far I've gotten just as far, in the book, for Sweet to introduce EPIC, I'll be reading (and hopefully finish) the book over the rest of the week and let you know what else I stumble upon.
But for now I just wanted to tell you all that my daughter is going to love Lightning Bugs…amazing.
The first few chapters of this book have my wondering: what are the things in our lives that used to amaze us so much, they amaze our kids, but we're so busy or so involved in "something else" that we're missing? (And now I have My Favorite Things running through my head…) What are the little things (Lightning Bugs) or the big things (standing on the western shore of Maui knowing the next thing out there, way out there, is Japan) that WOW us but we're too preoccupied to be amazed?
"Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded." – Habakkuk 1.5
My daughter is going to love Lightning Bugs…
A recent post on Wired (the web world for Wired Magazine) caught my attention. The title, "Scanning the Iliad With a 39-Megapixel Camera" grabbed me for two reasons. One, I'm a nerd, and two, I'm an apologist.
Nerd: First of all, this is the secondary reason for my writing, actually I didn't intend to write this at all but…I like scanning books too! For graduation from seminary I bought myself a tablet PC (it's so cool.) Now, for my library, I buy my books, cut off the binding, and scan them into my tablet PC. That way I can read them, annotate them, write and rewrite all over them, and carry my whole, marked up library, anywhere I go. Plus their all searchable, which makes finding something I know I read somewhere, sometime, a lot easier to find.
Apologist: One of the most popular lines I get from skeptics is, "you can't really trust the bible, and it's been translated so many times over so many years. How can it really be accurate?"
A very common misconception.
The facts of the New Testament alone (which is nearly 2,000 years old now) are staggering and would make any skeptic scratch their head and say, "hmmm, interesting."
The Wired post that I noted above explains that the oldest complete copy of Homer's (not Simpson) Iliad, the Venetus A, is being digitally scanned. The Venetus A manuscript is from the tenth century, and one of only 647 existing copies of Homer's work.
Big deal right?
Well, actually the Iliad is a big deal. It is arguably one of the most important literary works every penned. Google any English, or Literature professor in the world, email them, and ask them how important the Iliad is to our understanding of literature, language, and culture.
Anyways, 647 manuscripts and fragments have survived since Homer wrote the Iliad back in the 8th (or 7th or 6th) century BC.
Impressive right? And you don't hear Classical Literary Scholars doubting the authenticity of the Iliad do you?
So, what about the New Testament?
The most recent count (from 1980 according to one source) the number of New Testament manuscripts and fragments was 536. Oh, wait, typo…I meant to say 5,366! Wow! Of these, there are 34 complete New Testaments dating from the 9th to the 15th Centuries. The oldest fragment is a portion of the Gospel of John, which has been dated somewhere between A.D. 117-138.
So there are literally thousands more manuscripts of the New Testament than such an important literary work as the Iliad doesn't that say something about the authenticity of the Bible?
"No," you say…"there are so many errors and inconsistencies in the Bible and surely in all of those ancient manuscripts".
Actually, according to the best textual criticism, the New Testament is accurate to 99.5% and of the discrepencies (about 400 words) none affect any significant doctrine.
Anyways: For a better read on the authenticity of the New Testament check out this web page, which I pulled most of the facts I've quoted above from.
There is substantial evidence for the authenticity of the New Testament. It's just plain hard to argue against it. So, why aren't classic literary scholars trying to debunk the ancient manuscripts of the Iliad? And why are so many skeptics trying to debunk the NT?
I think the reason is Truth. The Bible presents truth, and Truth (Jesus). It proclaims one way, versus many ways ("I AM the way…"). It details morality, absolutely. And it sings the Good News that a perfect God loves unperfect people. But who wants any of that in our Post Modern world?
I do…
