farnham.

tj:

http://5by5.tv/bw2/42 was a great episode of Back To Work that touched on a lot of things I’ve been thinking about for awhile.

I wrote up the first of my responses over at my “Big Boy Blog” at http://luo.ma aka RhymesWithDiploma.com.

(Yes, I bought a domain name just to redirect it to my real domain name. No you have a problem.)

It touches on both religion and politics. I talk about The Secret, The Prosperity Gospel, the intentional misreading of the Bible to fit our preconceived notions, clichés people say because they can’t deal with the inexplicable, and more.

So if you like that kind of thing, take a look.

A decent piece on a great show. Maybe it’s because he’s a tech blogger now, and therefore a bit less of a seminarian (or perhaps because he’s Presbyterian), but I feel like this was a bit of a missed opportunity. In all fairness, I don’t know if TJ expected Merlin to reblog him, but even if not, here he was given the opportunity to declare the gospel (rather than merely decrying, rightly, the Prosperity Gospel) to an audience that either hasn’t heard it proclaimed, or has poor or mistaken perceptions of it.

Christ crucified has very little to do with productivity, but we all are in need of forgiveness of sins, whether or not we are concerned with our forgiveness. We need He who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, even though his paths are beyond searching out.

Proclaiming personal knowledge of Christ, knowldge that he died to save sinners, knowledge that we have needed, do need, and will continue to need his grace doesn’t imply that we have answers to the other important questions. TJ talks about theodicy a fair bit in his piece, and I am among the first to state that anybody who claims to have a reasonable/acceptable response to the problem of evil is either stupid, lying, selling something, or hasn’t actually gone through any suffering. Acknowledging that we don’t have all the answers, though, should not impede us from responding to the one Important Question for which we do have an answer: “What must I do to be saved?”

(via merlin)