Dear Katy Perry

Dear Katy Perry,

I really like your music. I mean the sound of it. It’s great for jumping around in one’s room or blasting in your car. It’s very catchy and it has good beats and good harmonies.

But. I cannot listen to most of your music because your are vulgar and indecent. Your lyrics are lamentably lascivious, lecherous, libertine, libidinous, licentious, loose, lustful, and lewd. You are always talking about having sex with guys and getting drunk and how they’re the best things ever.

I don’t agree – I’ve tried using sexual pleasure to satisfy me and it failed me and hurt me. I don’t appreciate you trying to get me to go back there and wallow in it again. It’s hard enough without your encouragement. So I am forced to change the station when I hear you come on the radio, and say goodbye to the awesome beat.

I’m told you started out as a Christian artist but went Pop because that’s where the money was. If that’s true, it’s quite a shame. (Check out Matthew 13, the Parable of the Sower, and put yourself in one of those categories.)

In any case, I will pray for you, because I know what does truly satisfy – a relationship with God through Jesus, the rescuer of your soul. I think it would be phenomenal if you turned to him and cast your hopes onto him – you’ve got a lot of reach and you could be a powerful influence for good. May the Lord grant your eyes to be opened to see him as the beautiful fountain he is.

Sincerely,

Ben Taylor

Dichotomy (I have converted)

Well, I searched the scriptures, searched the internet (found a thorough blog by Dr. Tim White), and talked to one of the elders at my church. I have converted to a dichotomistic view of man. Man is essentially two parts – a body and an immaterial, essential identity. Parsing the spirit and soul into two distinct entities is being overly mathematical.

Turns out that “spirit” and “soul” are used interchangeably and both perform the same functions throughout both Old and New Testaments. (e.g. departing at death, feeling pain, thinking, interacting with God’s Spirit…) That’s really the linchpin – no man’s speculation is worth as much as what the Bible seems to say about it.

The only exceptions are Hebrews 4:12, 1 Corinthians 14:14 and 1 Thessalonians 5:23. These can be explained as synonymic redundancy, for emphasis (in 1 Thess. 5:23, cf. Mark 12:30), or for literary style (in Hebrews 4:12; note the repeating of the synonymous pairs: “living and active” “soul and spirit” “joints and marrow” “thoughts and intentions”). 1 Corinthians 14:14 refers to the “mind” which is a component of the soul, not the same thing as the soul. It is easily arguable that the rational mind can be excluded from some functions of the inner self – “I suddenly found myself doing…”. Therefore, in light of the general trend of overlap throughout scripture, I assimilate these possible exceptions using the above explanations, and hold to the dichotomy perspective.

Dichotomy revisited

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. – Hebrews 4:12, NASB

For the Word that God speaks is alive and full of power [making it active, operative, energizing, and effective]; it is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line of the breath of life (soul) and [the immortal] spirit, and of joints and marrow [of the deepest parts of our nature], exposing and sifting and analyzing and judging the very thoughts and purposes of the heart. – Hebrews 4:12, Amplified Bible

This is the only verse Are the conjunctive pairs in Hebrews 4:12 reiterative or contrastive?

If contrastive, he is comparing two similar but distinct entities. “Bill found there to be a difference between love and marriage.”
If reiterative, he is using two terms to indicate the distinction between two word-of-God-cleft halves of the same substance. “James Dobson can give a good breakdown of love and marriage.”

To what extent do psychē and pneuma overlap? We know they do some…

The Word of God is able to diïkneomai (go through, penetrate, pierce) achri (as far as/until; idea of a terminus) the merismos (separation, division)

There is no preposition “of” – is the division between these elements or of them (separating berries or cutting a pie)?

psyche and pneuma
harmos and myelos (both occur only here, probably refer to simply the “inner parts of human nature”)

Strong’s G5590 – psychē
ψυχή
Transliteration
psychē
Pronunciation
psü-khā’ (Key)
Part of Speech
feminine noun
Root Word (Etymology)
From ψύχω (G5594)
TDNT Reference
9:608,1342
Vines
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Outline of Biblical Usage
1) breath
a) the breath of life
1) the vital force which animates the body and shows itself in breathing
a) of animals
b) of men
b) life
c) that in which there is life
1) a living being, a living soul
2) the soul
a) the seat of the feelings, desires, affections, aversions (our heart, soul etc.)
b) the (human) soul in so far as it is constituted that by the right use of the aids offered it by God it can attain its highest end and secure eternal blessedness, the soul regarded as a moral being designed for everlasting life
c) the soul as an essence which differs from the body and is not dissolved by death (distinguished from other parts of the body)

Authorized Version (KJV) Translation Count — Total: 105
AV — soul 58, life 40, mind 3, heart 1, heartily + 1537 1, not tr 2

Strong’s G4151 – pneuma
πνεῦμα
Transliteration
pneuma
Pronunciation
pnyü’-mä (Key)
Part of Speech
neuter noun
Root Word (Etymology)
From πνέω (G4154)
TDNT Reference
6:332,876
Vines
View Entry

Outline of Biblical Usage
1) the third person of the triune God, the Holy Spirit, coequal, coeternal with the Father and the Son
a) sometimes referred to in a way which emphasises his personality and character (the “Holy” Spirit)
b) sometimes referred to in a way which emphasises his work and power (the Spirit of “Truth”)
c) never referred to as a depersonalised force
2) the spirit, i.e. the vital principal by which the body is animated
a) the rational spirit, the power by which the human being feels, thinks, decides
b) the soul
3) a spirit, i.e. a simple essence, devoid of all or at least all grosser matter, and possessed of the power of knowing, desiring, deciding, and acting
a) a life giving spirit
b) a human soul that has left the body
c) a spirit higher than man but lower than God, i.e. an angel
1) used of demons, or evil spirits, who were conceived as inhabiting the bodies of men
2) the spiritual nature of Christ, higher than the highest angels and equal to God, the divine nature of Christ
4) the disposition or influence which fills and governs the soul of any one
a) the efficient source of any power, affection, emotion, desire, etc.
5) a movement of air (a gentle blast)
a) of the wind, hence the wind itself
b) breath of nostrils or mouth

[View this word in Trench’s Synonyms here.]
Authorized Version (KJV) Translation Count — Total: 385
AV — Spirit 111, Holy Ghost 89, Spirit (of God) 13, Spirit (of the Lord) 5, (My) Spirit 3, Spirit (of truth) 3, Spirit (of Christ) 2, human (spirit) 49, (evil) spirit 47, spirit (general) 26, spirit 8, (Jesus’ own) spirit 6, (Jesus’ own) ghost 2, misc 21

He will never see death

Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death. – John 8:51

Matt Chandler believes this means that, at the moment right as our souls leave our bodies, they are scooped up, as if by an angel, to paradise. We don’t truly “see” or “taste” death, in the sense that the tearing apart of soul and body comes thus gracefully and gently to the believer. Our eternal life continues uninterrupted. I agree with this – I can see the beauty in the angels eagerly gathering the saint at the very first instant they can. Worth some further thought.

Now that you say “we see”

Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains. – John 9:39-41

This is a cryptic passage that I’ve always kind of skipped over. “Ah, there’s Jesus being confusing again…I’ll wrestle with it later…” John Piper, to his credit, rolls up his sleeves and gives treatment to these difficult statements by Jesus. His sermon is here: For Judgment I Came Into This World

Here’s my paraphrase of the scripture, based on Piper’s breakdown:

“If you were blind, with the kind of real obliviousness that would exonerate you from responsibility, then yes, you would have no guilt. But you are not that kind of blind—you are blind, but you say that you see. Your blindness is of the sort that claims not to be blind. It’s a kind of willful ignorance, a rebellious avoidance of the light that you know. That kind of blindness does not diminish your guilt. It is your guilt.”

This is like the atheist who says there is no God and yet hates God and is opposed to the idea of him. What is he angry at? You cannot be angry at no one, you cannot hold a grudge against something which you genuinely believe doesn’t exist. The atheist knows in the back of his mind that God is there, but he plugs his ears and says “Nananana!” and chooses to make himself ignorant of God’s existence, because he doesn’t want God to exist. We believe what we want to believe.

The misfortune of this is that he can be rather effective in convincing himself that God does not exist, and after a while his heart will crust over and he will forget that he knows God exists, that is, until someone mentions God or some circumstance forces him back to the issue.

There is another danger, for me and other churchfolk, who think that by learning doctrine and morality and upstanding behavior, we are able to see. The gospel is for those who know we can’t see. “If you say you have no sin, your sin remains…” (1 John 1:8). It’s ironic. Everything is upside down in the Kingdom of God. Those who feel like they have it figured out, don’t. Those who know they don’t have it figured out, have thereby figured it out.

“I am the wisest person in the world, because I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.” – Socrates

What is a person?

At the Jireh coffeehouse last night, a cluster of us Christians got into some meaty speculation on the nature of man and what it means to be a person. We postulated that having a soul was comprised of the mind, will, emotions, and that a soul was a necessary, defining characteristic of being a person. “The soul is the seat of the identity,” someone suggested. However, this got us into a pickle.

Are thinking, feeling and choosing necessary functions of personhood? Can you be a person without them?

If one is a person only to the extent that he possesses a soul, i.e. the functions of mind, will and emotion, then our idea of personhood is narrowed. For example, is a human who doesn’t have a sentient mind (braindead patient, severe paranoid schizophrenic, or prenatal infant) still a person? An evangelical has to say, “Yes, he is still a person,” otherwise we would have to radically modify our stance on abortion, euthanasia, and “the sanctity of human life” generally.

So maybe it is possible to be a person and not have a soul (as we have defined it). On what basis do we define personhood, then? Well, we can go with the materialists and say that we are simply bodies, that supernatural concepts are simply smoke from the fire of the high-level survival instincts running in our frontal lobe. But if we believe there’s more to me than matter, where does that leave us?

We have to conclude that there is a distinctive element of the self that is not comprised of the mind, will, emotions, or body. It transcends these and exists even when they cease. That’s why Christians believe in the “sanctity of human life” and claim that every person is created in the image of God. The typical name for this isspirit. It’s been said that a person “is a spirit that has a soul and lives in a body.” That’s the trichotomist (3-Part) view of man.

What this means is there is more to my identity than my self-awareness. There is an essence of me that is created, sustained, and destined by God, which my thinking, feeling and choosing do not cause. If I were the ultimate determiner of my reality and my fate, then my soul (mind, will, emotions) would be the apex of my identity. But what if God is the ultimate determiner of who I am and who I become? God is not only sovereign over my circumstances, he is sovereign over my essence.

So, by discovery of the existence of a human “spirit,” we again encounter the supreme domain of God, and we face the age-old decision, whether we will rejoice in his rule or resent him for it.

Jephthah

Wayne Barber at New Camp 2011 pointed out that the judge Jephthah is in the Hebrews 11 “Hall of Faith.” However, besides going to war against the Canaanites, he’s chiefly known for making a rash vow that causes him to presumably kill his daughter as an offering to God (for his story read Judges chapter 11). Bummer.

Yet somehow he makes it into the list of people we should emulate. It’s not really whether child sacrifice is good that’s worth discussing, but why he’s in the list. I agree with Wayne that it points out a striking point:

Our mistakes do not cancel our ability to be used by God. God uses people with faith and failure mixed together – if he required a clean record, only Daniel, Joseph and Jesus would be our role models. Most of the rest of the Biblical figures are mentioned as having flaws – often some major ones. (Cf. Peter and the Disciples, Paul, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah etc.)

Praise God that I can still make an impact and be used by God in mighty ways, even if I feel like I’m worthy of being shelved for the rest of my days, consigned to mopping floors like John Newton in Amazing Grace.

I am too easily pleased

An excerpt from
The Weight of Glory
by C.S. Lewis
Preached originally as a sermon in the
Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford,
on June 8, 1942: published in
THEOLOGY, November, 1941,
and by the S.P.C.K, 1942
_____________________________

If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Read the rest here

Love like battle armor

Here’s a wake-up call for me: I’m a humble grad student, but having kids is less than a decade away. In
In the car with my brother last week, I tried to argue why it would be okay to put my kids through public school, you know, do things the “normal way.” We didn’t reach a clean conclusion, and I’m not saying public schools are good or bad. But by the end of the conversation, I admit my bro had me convinced of one thing: I have to ensure that my children are influenced by Christians (including their parents) more than non-Christian friends, teachers, and role models. I don’t know exactly what that will look like, but it’s my responsibility to find out.

I want to redefine “sheltered.” The former generation often protected the upbringing of their children by cloistering them in Christian schools, churches, etc. I say the new generation can (and even should) be “in the world,” operating as salt and light in normal secular contexts. However, it’s simple fact: you become like those you spend time with and those you look up to. My kids will become like those who give them the most time, attention, and affirmation. If I’m not proactive about it, his friend Greg and the science teacher Mr. Kim will shape him the most.

I’m not a fan of being “sheltered,” at least in the way often associated with homeschoolers (you know, bare-footed spelling-bee champions who are downright weird). I suggest a new concept of “shelter” – not a cloister from culture, but bands of relationship that surround you. I want to give my children something more like battle armor than a fortress. Friends from church, a loving family, mentors and teachers, all who share in our beliefs. “Beliefs are based on relationships” (Josh McDowell). Wrapped in those caring relationships, like chain mail, my children will be better armed to withstand worldly influences.

We must be the primary influences on our children. Pre-school and day-care and babysitters and summer camps and “go-play-with-your-friends” won’t cut it these days. The challenge lies before us, and we must rise to meet it: we must be committed to love our children in the face of a hypercommitted society where sitting down for a family meal is a big event.

I’ve got to invest the time necessary to influence my children’s upbringing, to find out how to successfully “raise up my children in the way they should go” in a postmodern melting pot.

So to me and my young adult friends who are going to be parents sooner that we think: do we know what we believe, and what we want our children to believe? Are we ready? The next generation will soon be upon us.

The law in one commandment

For thus says the Lord to the house of Israel: Seek Me [inquire for and of Me and require Me as you require food] and you shall live!
Amos 5:4 (Amplified)

Seek God.

William H. Saulez, in The Romance of the Hebrew Language, says that this is the simplification of the Law into a single commandment. Beautifully unified, the command echoes inside my soul. Like it did in David’s.

You have said, “Seek my face.” My heart says to you, “Your face, LORD, do I seek.”
Psalm 27:8 (ESV)