Tag: author

“God Behaving Badly” (exclusive interview with author Dr. David Lamb)

Dr David Lamb ..."the Bible guy"

God Behaving Badly: Is God Angry, Sexist and Racist?
The cheeky title sucked me right in, so I contacted Dr. Lamb to learn more about his new book. I read a (free) PDF copy, and shot him some questions. His answers are below. Since he took the time to write about the tough stuff, I figured he’d be okay if I pitched with a hardball. I hope you enjoy it.

PLUS. Check out what I wrote up as a review for the book at Amazon, here. I don’t pull punches, with my pros and cons. It’s a blogger integrity thing.

Also–See how you can get your very own free, signed copy at the end of the post.

INTERVIEW:
Dave, thanks for giving me a PDF copy of your book to read. Here are a few burning questions:

1. Your sense of humor comes out a lot in GBB, which makes it enjoyable to read. (Old Testament and theology stuff is often a dry topic, have you noticed?) So, am I right to assume that you and D.A. Carson are not involved in a comedy improv group together?

Carson keeps asking me to come on tour with his troupe, but previous engagements prohibit.

Yes, I’ve noticed that books on the OT or theology aren’t generally enjoyable to read. The most critical initial reader of the book didn’t like my tone and humor. He wanted me to use words like “ontological”, but I’ve told close friends if I ever use that word they have permission to dope-slap me instantly. I wanted to write a book that not only discussed some of the most troubling passages in Scripture, but also made people laugh. George Bernard Shaw said, “If you are going to tell people the truth, make them laugh, or they will kill you.” That’s my personal motto.

2. What prompted you to write the book? (An experience?  A conversation? A “journey”? A course you were teaching? etc.)

I love teaching on difficult texts and ignored texts. This book brought those two interests together.

It’s hard to say something fresh about John 3:16 (“been there, done that”). It’s not hard to say something fresh about Uzzah (2 Sam. 6 The guy God smote after he touched the ark to steady it for falling.) because preachers and teachers are afraid to talk about texts like that. No one’s heard a sermon on Uzzah before, so the one I give might be the best one they’ve ever heard.

It also comes out of either insecurity or defensiveness. When you teach OT in the world where the NT reigns supreme you feel like you want to address that situation, to defend the OT and YHWH. Ultimately, it breaks my heart that people don’t love and appreciate the OT and the God it describes.

3. So, do you consider GBB a theological book? ….Or, what category do you think it fits into?

My favorite question to ask students while discussing a biblical text is, “What do we learn about God here?” I guess that makes me theologian, although, I’d rather be called a student of the Bible (or better yet, “a Bible guy”).

GBB is mainly a book about the Bible, particularly the Old Testament. I don’t quote many scholars, theologians or apologists, but at the back GBB has a 5-page Scripture index filled with literally hundreds of Bible references.

4.  I think the ones most likely to best appreciate your book are
Seekers, Doubters, and untrained or new Christians. Though well-researched, it does not  read like an academic-styled book. Who do you think it’s best for?

The primary audience includes people who are troubled by what they read in the Old Testament. I think that means everyone.

5. Your book covers a really tough and confusing issue with regards to Old Testament Law. Rape. On page 179 you say, “Even though God hates rape, he commands a woman to marry her rapist.” Ugh. I don’t think this argument really works to help your point, Dave. Can you explain this topic a bit more?

The dynamics of courtship and marriage in the OT context are indeed much different than they are today. Many of us realize that most rapes are committed not by strangers, but by acquaintances, and I’m pretty sure this was true in OT times, so some of these dynamics may come into play into contexts like Deut. 22, which may have been comparable to a “date rape”. The distinction between rape, and seduction between people who know each other sometimes blurs, but the fact that various OT laws are engaging this topic, and are generally mandating severe penalties for the perpetrator in order to protect the victim was progressive in the ancient Near East.

6. Suppose someone argues that you are just making a bunch of excuses for God to make him a “better sale”. How would you respond to that?

Yep. That’s true. Although, it’s hard to sell something if you believe your product is crap. Gifted salespeople could do that. I couldn’t. It helps to have a product that you believe in. The God that I encounter in the pages of the Old Testament is highly compelling, so it makes for an easy sale, even with all the smiting.

I don’t deny that I have a bias (I’m post-modern). I try to state my biases up front. I would want to hear what the bias is of people who think I’m making excuses for God. Once we get our biases out in the open, then I would want to look at the text together and discuss it. Hopefully, we could then learn from each other.

7. I appreciate that you don’t claim to know everything about the meanings of the laws, recorded acts, and motivations of God in the Testaments. In general, would you like to encourage readers to be okay (flexible) with not knowing all the whys and particulars in the troubling passages of the Bible? Do you see a practical application for doing this?

We’re going to need to be OK without knowing all the whys because these texts will never fully make sense to anyone. We need to work to gain understanding, but we won’t arrive at that point ever. If someone thinks they understand all the troubling Bible texts, they are either naïve, deceived or arrogant. In GBB, I’m trying to give people helpful tools for understanding tough texts (I hope to do more of that in a future book). If we’re OK with not fully solving these problematic passages, then we can be free to look at them and begin to make more sense of them.

The practical application is that students and teachers of the Bible would not avoid, but they would seek out troubling texts and be eager to teach on them. These texts have profound lessons to teach us about God and God’s character. I personally believe Paul wasn’t high when he said “all Scripture is inspired and profitable for teaching, for reproof…” (2 Tim 3:16), so maybe we should teach “all Scripture”. And Paul was talking about the Old Testament primarily. Most pastors and Bible teachers might say they agree with Paul, but when you look at what they teach and preach on, they don’t agree with Paul.

8. What one thing (or you can pick a few) do you think people get wrong when they try to understand the God recorded in Scriptures?

I could pick a lot of things, but if I had to focus on one thing people get wrong I’d say people want a God they can completely understand and predict. Our tiny brains can’t fully comprehend God and his behavior. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, but he’s not going to fit neatly into our systematic theology framework. This shouldn’t surprise us because we can’t fully understand people and people are made in God’s image. Both God and humans are complex, mysterious.

God also wants to have a real relationship with us not to fit into our conceptual framework of the divine. At risk of being trite, C.S. Lewis said in the Chronicles of Narnia that “Aslan is not a tame lion”. The first time I read that it didn’t make sense to me. Later, it just made me mad. Now, I think it’s brilliant. We want to tame God by putting him into our conceptual frameworks so we can understand him. That’s just not going to happen. If I were God (a big “if”), that would piss me off.

9. Anything else you’d like to add?
 This book is meant to encourage people to not be afraid of the Old Testament and the God it describes.  It addresses 7 problems, each in only 1 chapter.  So, it’s not meant to give a final exhaustive answer to these questions, but hopefully it can be a starting point.  I could recommend other books that go into more detail, but the best way to keep working on these issues is to study and discuss problematic passages in the context of community, with family and friends, in small groups and Sunday school classes.  As people do this, they will deepen their relationships with each other, as well as their relationship with God.

I agree! Thanks, Dave, and thanks to all of you for reading. To read more from Dave find his blog, here.

WANT YOUR VERY OWN SIGNED COPY—FREE?

For a chance to win a signed copy (and a box of chocolates from me), click the Tweet This button below. Not on Twitter? For shame! Making a twitter account takes 90 seconds. Go for it here: Otherwise–Link to this page from your Facebook page, an email, your blog (or other social media). Someone will be chosen November 20th. The more times you tweet, or link here, the better your chances. Whoot- Whoot!

The Story Behind the Song “Jesus Loves Me” (a poem by Anna Bartlett Warner)

Here’s the Story behind the song Jesus Loves Me.

The song most of us have sung, Jesus Loves Me was written by Anna Bartlett Warner  who was born August 31, 1827 – died January 22, 1915. Warner was an American writer, the author of several books, and of poems set to music as hymns and religious songs for children. (Via Wikipedia)

Anna’s family home was quite close to the United States Military Academy at West Point, in New York, in the era just before the Civil War. Each Sunday Anna taught Bible classes to the cadets. Her remains are buried in the military cemetery, and her family home is now a museum on the grounds of  the United States Military Academy.

Undoubtably, her most well-known work (and the point of this post) came from the poem from her and her sister’s 1860s quite sentimental and best-selling novel entitled Say and Seal. It was soon set to music by William Bradbury, who added the chorus we still sing today in one of the most well-known children’s Christian hymns of all time…you guessed it! Jesus Loves Me. Many soldiers on the battlegrounds during the War Between the States sang this hymn and found spiritual comfort.

In a scene that brought many people to tears in the novel, a child lays dying and is comforted from his pain, as the main character recites a poem:

Jesus loves me! This I know,

For the Bible tells me so.

Little ones to Him belong;

They are weak, but He is strong.

Children of God, let it be your simple prayer today.

Blessings.
-Lisa 

9/11; and the Interview & Confessions of a Funeral Director…

 

View my 3 Part video interview with Caleb here.

 

The 10th Anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy a week from this Sunday. We will once again see images and recount the horrors of that day, and try in memorial to accept the reality of this world. Most of us don’t encounter death and our own mortality too often. Most of us don’t constantly see suffering, and witness grief and loss.

Please take some time today, or this weekend to remember that the events of 9/11 still bring pain to many. Loved ones are missed, and we can’t gloss over the national tragedy that left a collective hole in our hearts, even ten years later.

This seems a fitting time to discuss an author who is very acquainted with death. It’s his job to be, and his perspective can be very helpful to us. As promised a couple of weeks earlier, the following is my personal interview with blogger and upcoming author Caleb Wilde, a 6th generation Funeral Director, seminary student, husband, and expectant adoptive dad.

My Questions for Caleb:

 

1. Being a 6th generation funeral director, you have quite a unique vantage point on life, loss, and mortality. How do you think you live life differently than other Christians because of where God has placed you?

 

Caleb: In traditional religious calendars, the day in-between “Good Friday” and “Easter” is called “Holy Saturday”.  “Holy Saturday” is the day the disciples’ hopes and beliefs were engulfed in death and silence, as they viewed their Messiah’s death without the knowledge of the resurrection.

In some sense, I live the life of Holy Saturday.

As funeral directors, we’re paid by families to be a human shield to death, whereby we make death somewhat easier, less real and more proper.  As this human shield, I’m affected.  I’m affected by the brokenness, by the grief, by the hopelessness I see in faces, by the newly fatherless/motherless children, the tragic deaths and the accidents.

All this has made my personal faith more sensitive to questions of God’s goodness and justice.  It’s not easy for me to understand ideas of “eternal hell”, or ideas of “meticulous divine providence” or even “absolute foreknowledge” or “omnipotence”.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m still a Christian.

 

2. What do people misunderstand most about your work?

Caleb: We’re a lot like pastors.  Our jobs are really quite similar, except that one is recognized as “ministry” while the other is “business.”  That’s probably the largest misconception … there’s no way funeral directors can meet with grieving families through the most difficult time of their lives and come out on the other side as “business people.”

Everything else is true, though … we are dark and we are odd people.

In ancient times, death practitioners were ostracized from normal society by rule.  Today, we’re partly ostracized from the norm of society by practice.

 

3. The constant stream of customers (people dying, and their families burying them) can make one grow numb or cold toward the concept and process of death and burial. Do things still surprise you or impact you? What kind of things?

Caleb: There’s something so unnatural about death that (save the very old) it’s difficult to become numb.

 

4. You’ve probably thought about what you’d want your own funeral to look and sound like. Can you tell us about that?

 

Caleb: About two years ago, I started taking one minute video clips of myself, so that by the time I’m 70, I should have a montage of age progression videos that can be used for my funeral.

I’ve also talked about recording a message from myself to my family and friends that could be shown at my funeral as the eulogy.  But, by the time I’m ready to die, I figure they’ll have holographic projections, so I’ll wait for that tech until I record my final goodbye.

 

5. The saddest funeral I ever went to was for a 13 year old boy who took his own life. What have you learned about people during the time of more tragic circumstances that you’ve been a part of?

 

Caleb: Funerals/death are a perfect storm: you have death, the inheritance money, high emotions and family you might not like too much who are around you all the time.

Funerals intensify people’s real character.  You see the best in people and you see the worst.  The bad people will do horrendous things at funerals, like start fights, curse out their family members over money.  And you can see Jesus in the good ones.

 

6. Do you find your work mostly depressing, hopeful, profound, mundane, etc.? Would you recommend this vantage point to others?

 

Caleb: It’s a tough ministry that has little boundaries.  Many funeral homes are also generational, so many of us work with our dads, grandfathers, uncles and cousins, which can make this at-need work that much more difficult to set up healthy boundaries.

Similar to any ministry, I think there should be a passion for death work … a calling of sorts, whereby you know this is what you’re supposed to do.  And being a “calling”, few have witnessed this vantage point.

It’s unique.

 

7. Do you want to stay in the family business? Why or why not?

Caleb: Next question : )

 

8. Tell us a bit about how you view suffering, pain, and death from your unique perspective…which probably has a lot to do with the message in your book.

 

Caleb: I’ve built my understanding of God around suffering, pain and death.  It’s a local theology.  And my understanding of God, suffering, pain and death in light of my faith is the content of my upcoming book, “Confessions of a Funeral Director.”  Hopefully, it will be out in less than a year.  You can get an idea of how death has affected my view of God at my blog, www.calebwilde.com.  My book, though, will contain much more narrative than my blog.

 

9. What’s your best idea for a Smart Phone app.?

 

Caleb: I live near Lancaster County (PA), home of the Amish and Mennonites, so there’s a lot of intermarrying in these parts.  Not to mention, most of the towns in the rural areas of Pennsylvania have families that have lived there for centuries, so many of them are related.

I have an idea to partner with Ancestry.com and create an app the lets you bump smart phones with another person and it will tell you how you’re related to them.  My theory is that this will greatly help the evolution of humans by creating a purer gene pool.   The apps name is “Bump it before you Hump it”.

 THANK YOU, Caleb, and best wishes on your book. I’m really excited to get a copy. 

The working title for Caleb’s book is Confessions of  Funeral Director. A bit more on that here.

So, my reader friends, what are you curious about? Ask Caleb your deep, dark, or even silly questions!

What promotes growth?

For me, growth can happen through many means. Influence is one, trials are another (but, what a bummer!), and silence is one too (ditto from the last parenthetical sentence).

I’ve been struck lately by reading Richard Foster‘s excellent book on spiritual growth called “Celebration of Discipline” (In its 4 printing, starting in 1978!). One of his great encouragements is to remain silent as we allow God to do our “explaining”.

I have to admit. I’m terrible at silence. I’m a communicator. I say stuff. Plenty of stuff. I’m a writer, a teacher, a parent, a friend, etc. But, ya know, I should shut up more. The temptation to explain our selves and patch up misunderstandings, it seems, can hinder our reliance and dependance on God. Yes, that’s incredibly strange, and sort of hard to hear. But really, we want to fix stuff much too much, am I right? If only we can get in there and makes things right, or fix up a situation, we’ll feel so comforted. It’s a weird little addiction that points to a rather needless futility. We have so little control over how and what others think of us…let alone, the bigger things in our life (health, safety, many circumstances). Let’s be honest.

( I HIGHLY recommend Foster’s book.)

• Do you think Foster has it right?

What are surprising ways that cause growth in you?

Guest Writer: Jeffrey Roop on 5 Insights of Upside Down Leadership

Jesus as Servant (Upside Down Leadership)
Peter Upside Down, by Sherry Camhy

Jeffrey Roop

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you to Jeff Roop (not to be confused with Jeff Roop, Actor: Vampire High; born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, Canada) for weighing in on Leadership today with this article.

Servant Leadership

Servant leadership is a common theme within Vineyard churches with the emphasis on function rather than position or title. With mega-churches to simple church networks covering the spectrum of faith communities in the Vineyard, how the function works out will vary depending on the size of the church. I have reservations with churches adopting business models of leadership. The church is not a business with a CEO but the Body of Christ with Christ as the head.

The life of Jesus is the oft cited example of servant leadership. Some have raised the question though of service over leading [TheJesusVirus.org] Authority is often the issue under consideration regarding matters of leadership. Jesus puts it to rest as far as hierarchy goes: not so among you, the greatest is the servant of all. He presents the upside-down view of the Kingdom of God regarding authority.

Kingdom authority is different than the leadership offered in the business world. The world system is (often) beastly with no worries of serving others (although this is changing on some fronts). Those within the Body of Christ are called to submit to one another and to Christ. This would seem to include those in leadership.

Now with this level playing field of mutual submission, what of Hebrews 13 and other references to leadership? If we interpret these passages in light of the example of Jesus Christ, I believe authority and leadership will look different from commonly understood. Consider the following:

1. Recognize those in leadership as gifts to the church. (Eph 5) We often recognize the manifestation of certain grace gifts (charisma) in practice so why not recognize those people as gifting the church?

2. Reflect on their influence. As I’m seeing leadership, influence and persuasion are key. The words shared by them are not ultimate but should lead us to contemplate on the final Word, Jesus Christ. The ultimate authority is in Christ and any other authority is derivative of Him and reflecting His character.

3. Look to their example. In a few places the Apostle Paul encourages an ‘imitate me as I imitate Christ.’ I’m sure such imitation will not be 100%, yet we should be able to see something of Christ reflected and modeled in their life.

3. Help them and befriend them. Often in traditional churches, those in leadership face crushing loneliness and spiritual fatigue. If the opportunity presents itself, be a friend and support them as a friend, not as a leader. Allow them to be a simple brother or sister in Christ.

4. Reserve judgment. Too often when someone in leadership falls for whatever reason we tend to rush to judgment. Remember, they are frail human beings like the rest of us. They too can stumble and fall. They are not out of reach of grace. If you face this in your congregation, help to lovingly restore them in a spirit of gentleness.

5. Always look to Christ. Any leader in the church should point others to Christ, who is the True Shepherd. If the leader creates dependence on themselves rather than Christ in the church, the authority of Christ is being subverted. I’ve heard too much talk of leadership, authority and submission lead to fear and control. Those in leadership are to be a sign to others, guiding them to freedom, love and service found in Christ.

Questions

Only Jesus Christ is the head of the church, the question before leadership is this, are you willing to give up control for the sake of an authority found solely in service? When did ministry become means of authority rather than the place of service?

Thanks, Jeff!
Well, friends, let’s continue the discussion. What are your thoughts on Leadership, and servant leadership? Do you embrace the “Upside Down model” Jeff mentions?

Resource:
My alma mater Evangelical Theological Seminary has an ongoing initiative called Center for Leadership Impact with events and training for leaders in the community and business world. You may find it helpful.