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Part I
MARTIN, R.P. (1987) Philippians, in Leon Canon Morris (gen. ed.), Tyndale New Testament Commentary, Leicester/Grand Rapids, Inter-Varsity Press/William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Philippians 4: 8
New American Standard Bible (NASB)
8 Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is [a]lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, [b]dwell on these things.
Footnotes: Philippians 4:8 Or lovable and gracious Philippians 4:8 Lit ponder these things New American Standard Bible (NASB)
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| Flores, Portugal, Maria Ribeiro, Portugal |
Game of Thrones is equated with sexual sin and lust in a sermon at church.
Can a Christian Biblically study atheistic authors?
The Pastor correctly as I stated, connected avoiding sexual sin with the metaphors of Matthew 5, tear out the eye that makes you stumble, cut off your right eye that makes you stumble, with the burn of 1 Corinthians 7 that is to be satisfied through marriage. He connected Jesus to Paul.
ReplyDeleteIt is the responsibility of a single man, such as myself to seek to deal with the burn, and not with a non-Christian, or one unequally yoked, as in 2 Corinthians 6.
In my case the need for someone to talk to is much larger than burn struggles, let us be clear here.
I have admitted my social skills are better as a non-student. As a student I was so focused on gaining the PhD that although I wanted a relationship, my work time, and while battling sleep apnea that was much worse than now, made me unable to focus on social skills as I do now. I chat with people at church and at work I am a charmer and frinedly, with the cleaning staff (I work evening shift) and employees. One of them now wants to set me up with her sister, and she is a younger woman. My married 30 year old co-worker, that I have no interest in, again I repeat no interest, states I am handsome and her big brother. She calls while waiting for her train and jokes she misses me already as she checks to see if we did the work she requested. We joke around and I work on my skills.
However, I am not not trying to attack or be a jerk, here, a married fellow at church at about my age, when I stated in regard to the sermon that it was difficult to find Christians in Metro Vancouver, very much agreed. It is much more secular than most of the USA, if not all.
He noted that feminism, that is radical feminism and its influence was a large problem in the Church. We are not meaning fair pay for fair work as a man receives, or avoiding sexual harassment and having equal opportunities. We are meaning, non and sometimes anti-Biblical views.
If a young woman has no interest in me, and is true to God and self, I have no problem even if it does hurt, I see it as just.
I have rejected my share of women, but am still friends with many of them.
What a contrast.
But I counted in my head the other day, about 30 young women, many of them Christians showing interest in me offline and online. Some of these have been for years, rather intensely for years on more than one social network.
Since they know my interests, avoidance would seem the more likely approach.
Now I may be a bit of a dummy with women, ;), but for me to think all of this is purely intellectual interest is male bovine manure. Even I am not that dumb (except for tots).
Blogger Russell Norman Murray said...
ReplyDeleteCont.
I think some women see the younger and perhaps more handsome men, and having been programmed by family, church and culture, and especially friends to go for the hottest most successful man, forget and neglect a Biblical position. They do the easier thing.
Acts 4, we are to heed to God and not to man.
Again I have no problem with a woman with no romantic interest, rejecting, even if it hurts, but I can state as one that has done a very high level of research that the groups of people that follow me the most intensely online are closest friends and family and a half handful of male bloggers.
The rest are single women I have showed interest in at times. Some of them willing to publicly be friends and some not.
Other than one person, that is like a little sister, no married women follow me in such a manner.
This is hardly a coincidence. Big D tries to opine that the younger woman have more time than the married older ones.
That is half a point, but these women are students and professionals and some of them with very serious jobs. So, it is only a half a point.
Why are there not more housewives following, for example?
I reason, that some women, like younger and older men, these are intellectual elite type women.
They need to step up and obey Acts 4 and stop trying to in a sense, allow family and friends and agendas, including one's own to play God.
Feelings and women's intuition, no matter how many women are involved, or Dad's, does not make up for an objective research into feelings and opportunities and what God's will might actually be.
Not just God's permissible will, but God's perfect will.
Of course most Christian women can take the easier route and eventually marry at some time.
Evangelical Christian women on dating sites so often write about 'I want to obey God', blah, blah, blah, they 'love Jesus first and foremost'.
But if it was God's perfect will for one of them to be a martyr at the hands of ISIS, do you think virtually any friend or family member would support it?
Would the potential martyr?
To a less extent this is the reaction to older man-younger relationship in North American, British and Northern/Western European societies, and it is not of God and is not Biblical.
Let us see chapter and verse, not just fundamentalist American material stating we don't like large gaps and that a man over 35+ has lived a long time single and cannot relate. Those are based on speculation that is sometimes slanderous. I also can answer all objections other than 'I am not interested'.
I am not at all stating that I know that anyone in particular is for me at this point. I cannot play God, but I am stating for certain, philosophically and theologically that it is often being mishandled.
Fear is overcoming faith.
Maybe that sister is really a good one...
God bless.
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A guy in a taxi wanted to speak to the driver so he leaned forward and tapped him on the shoulder.
ReplyDeleteThe driver screamed, jumped up in the air and yanked the wheel over.
The car mounted the curb, demolished a lamppost and came to a stop inches from a shop window.
The startled passenger said, "I didn't mean to frighten you, I just wanted to ask you something."
The Taxi driver said, "It's not your fault sir. It's my first day as a cab driver.
I've been driving a hearse for the past 25 years!
…..Doc’s Daily Chuckle (docsdailychuckle@associate.com) by way of “Christian Voices” (ChristianVoices@att.net)
You're just jealous because the voices only talk to me
ReplyDeleteConsciousness: That annoying time between naps.
ReplyDeleteProcrastinate Now!
ReplyDeleteMore Than Description Would I Know
ReplyDeleteWhat is Christianity? What difference does it make? Do those questions overlap? I think they're almost the same:”since the Lord shows us what is true and godly, that is how we want to live." That’s all we need to know. But some sermons don't seem to give us applications, instead they give us the truth about something in the Bible, and let us figure out for ourselves what that means for us right now. The old Puritan sermon worked hard to bring God's word and your life together, and in Scotland there were small group meetings during the week, "prophecyings," when they helped each other spell out what the preacher's applications could mean for them, in practical ways. That's the kind of Bible study and preaching that I think is worthwhile, that offers questions like these: "This is my life right now, my wife and I aren't close, what should I do?” or "I worked really hard and know what I'm doing. I'm due for a promotion. But the boss's son, who knows nothing, just got promoted over me. I'm angry. What do I do now?" or "I just don't get anything out of the Bible anymore. I try to read it but it doesn't say anything to me, so what now?” I learned many wise things from Jay Adams, but this is at the top of my list: don't be content with knowing What God wants you to do, go on to the How he wants you to do it. That's godly application.
If we hear too few sermons like that, I think it's because we somehow have separated pastoring from preaching. When the pastor works biblically and intensely with his people and their temptations and frustrations all week, the biblical answers the Lord has given him don't go away but flow naturally into how he opens the word for everyone. In the seminary world it's the presence of biblical counseling that has made the difference, so when you study side by side how the Greek in that text comes together and also how life-changing that truth is, then you know how fulfilling your calling can be. If anyone is picking a seminary right now, take a good look at its counseling program, especially how biblically-oriented it is. My pick has always been CCEF, now working primarily at RTS Charlotte.
ReplyDeleteThis seems obvious to me, so why doesn’t it happen more? It’s the fear of what happens when you try to make the Christian faith meaningful! Does concern for meaning diminish concern for the truth? It has seemed that way. Friedrich Schleiermacher had his roots in Pietism and went on to became the founder of modern liberalism. (My doctoral diss covered how personal application influenced biblical interpretation). When liberals couldn't see how some biblical teaching had any practical value, they try to fix that by deliberately misinterpreting it. The resurrection of Jesus is at the heart of our faith—but don't get bogged down in asking if it really happened, is what they taught.
ReplyDeleteMuch of our church history revolves around Christian evaluation of black slavery. They tried to base it on a biblical model while denying biblical rules applied, as in: every 50 years everyone goes free, and if you beat a slave he's free immediately, not to mention how a biblical model of marriage should work inside slavery. When the evil of our slavery became clear, with apparently no biblical tools for evaluating it, that's when people started to get used to looking outside the Bible for how to guide their lives. American pragmatism did the same destructive work of avoiding biblical meaning for life that European existentialism was doing. If you believe that the Bible can’t give you the answers you need, then its study becomes more and more descriptive, and not at all truly meaningful.
ReplyDeleteThat resulted in catastrophic tension: fundamentalism tells us the truth, and liberalism tells us how to live. I was helped by dispensationalism like everyone else in my generation, but what it did by making “the law of God" unimportant to us in our gospel age just turned our faith into a yearning for a distant millennial future without much left for the here and now except “description.” "Literal when possible" could too easily mean "irrelevant when possible."
ReplyDeleteIn my calling of preparing men and women for Christian leadership I have been greatly encouraged by godly wisdom from three different sources. First of all has been biblical counseling. As we come to see the complexity of our lives and the many issues we wrestle with, isn’t it amazing how our search for biblical answers is so richly rewarded!
ReplyDeleteTaking seriously that the Lord has called us to be a global church has opened our eyes to the depth of biblical truth, for me shown by my colleague Harvie Conn. We are called to explore how the gospel is best expressed in another culture, and also to see how we have taken for granted much in our own culture to be gospel truth, when it just isn’t. It was unexpected but hardly surprising to learn that for Tim Keller, Harvie opened the door to New York City!
ReplyDeleteFinally, we have come to see how our work with the Bible itself demands familiarity with the cultures through which it was expressed. Back then Meredith Kline taught us to see that in the Hittite world and our eyes opened wider. Old Testament study is not easy for me, but the work of colleagues Ray Dillard, Tremper Longman, Al Groves, Doug Green and Mike Kelly opened up for me so much more of the meaning and hence meaningfulness of God’s holy word.
ReplyDeleteAll that comes out of the academic world, but I’ve seen godly application directly among the Lord’s people. The Bible is more than interesting, it actually fits our real world! That was the heart of Wesley and Whitefield’s turning from the merely descriptive lecturing in their former church to the passionate applicability of the Great Awakening. How does what God tells us make changes in our troubled lives? There is where our work must start.
ReplyDeleteHere are three remarkable and timely books we should all work with. First comes Tim Witmer’s The Shepherd Leader. It bucks the tide today of isolating preaching from pastoring and shows cogently and dynamically how they build upon each other. The preacher casts our vision, but he builds upon what he knows of his people. Also, I’m constantly delighted with John Leonard’s Get Real. He shows us how we can do much better than memorizing a script as we talk with those not-yet-believers. We can get to know them by hearing them out and then showing them how the Lord understands and loves them. Then here is my latest joy, Jack Klumpenhower’s Show Them Jesus, Teaching the Gospel to Kids. When we talk to those kids about Jesus, why do we leave out so much, except that they need to shape up? If we can learn a clear path for talking to our kids, we can even share the loving gospel with each other!
ReplyDeleteThose books help me, and I think they will you too. We don’t have to be enslaved by threats of “relevance” inevitably leading us to selling out the faith. Gospel relevance is the calling the Lord has given us, for each other and for the lost and dying world, and He is able!
ReplyDeletecan imagine Awakening as what will happen when a Whitefield class orator comes along, or when people have prayed for forty years, or when society collapses all the way. All of that is just false and foolish. Awakening comes today as we call upon the Lord to give our hearts discontent with bare description and passion for the deep meaning of the Cross and Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let’s pray now together for that, asking in joy—since that has been on the Lord’s own heart for us all along.
ReplyDeleteD. Clair Davis
Note: friendly mode.Smile
ReplyDeleteI don’t like to be negative on blogs, and I work 60 hours a week and do not want to make hassles. But I reason I need to state this.
It is too controversial for a main post and so I will place it in comments in places.
I also humbly admit my sinfulness and finiteness.
With all the anti-Christian, post-Christian movements in Western society, the Church is hurting itself.
I find often Christians are too weak on justice or love and sometimes both.
Then there is sexual sin, with which I have always admitted as an adult is a struggle for me, in thought primarily. I claim no innocence.
Therefore, I critique it more so as a fellow sinner, saved by grace, in Christ, as opposed to a self-righteous judge. To be clear.
As my post-student self I have been dialoguing with women at work and other from the ages of 17-60+.
I have had many good talks.
Personally, by the way, in my case, I do not find age primary in relating, but rather worldview and shared interests.
I have had a long time to ponder on being single, and although I am no relationship expert, I have developed what I reason are insightful and largely true, at least, perspectives in regard to the problem of evil and relationships. Let us word it that way.
Seems to me, there are two main groups of women, that show interest in me, and I show interest in.
One, the committed Christian. I saw an example of one tonight on a social networking site. She has a very good but likely small Christian ministry. We have not dialogued but she shows as likely at least an occasional viewer of my posts/profile.
I see her personal photos and she has been in a relationship for years and is not married. Further, I look at her photos and she has photos of her and what appears a male ‘relationship partner’ and in some she is dressed beside him with her breasts being very prominent.
Let us cut the crap. I can deduce having studied human nature that 9?% they are having some kind of sexual relations, outside of marriage being together for years.
Virtually no one is being fooled. If that is the goal.
If he is a non-Christian and she is a Christian, and I state if, then we have this same old Western dilemma with Christian women dating and mating non-believers at the expense of believers.
If they are both believers, there is zero excuse, despite social reasons for not marrying or instead the relationship should be ended.
Mathew 5 and 1 Corinthians 7 and 2 Corinthians 6 bring one to the clear theology that marriage is the fix, largely, for fornication. It is very imperfect in this sinful realm, of course.
To not follow that directive when there is a viable partner is definite and definitive sin.
At any age of adulthood.
If one ignores the believer that is interested where there might be mutual interest, that is also definite and definitive sin.
Certainly some are doing this to me...even as I am talking to many women, some in Christ.
In Christians are not marrying (2 Corinthians 6) and fornicating because as I have read Christian men are wimpy, or weird or whatever, this is a female cop-out.
The Christian also discredits self and ministry by publicly claiming Christ and by fornicating.
Cont.
Hey...
ReplyDeleteAgain, virtually no one is fooled. If you are dating someone for a year or more and not on the marriage track, come on, fornication is basically likely if not certain.
If not in the flesh, in the mind (Mathew 5, 1 Corinthians 7).
Christian women, need to realize that social rules and social status can be as problematic to females as pornography is to men.
To state that one needs a boyfriend and because only the non-Christians are good, that is the only option, is non-Biblical and a cop-out.
By actions you also at times can deny access to you from Christian men that need to learn how to date better etc...
Realize that the non-Christian can be more experienced and cool, because he can just mate with you for awhile and move on. If you get pregnant, abortion on demand is an option in his worldview, most likely, for example.
Also no guarantee there will be a public and in the family Daddy if the birth occurs.
The Christian man has to be more careful.
And you negate the possibility that perhaps you can learn some spiritual truths from that ‘dork’ or ‘nerd’, you have written off or are saving for ‘maybe later’...
To trust in female intuition and/or social rules, family/friends over Scripture and to be guided by the Holy Spirit is a sinful cop-out.
Putting career above marriage is also sin, if you are fornicating in the process.
And you can fornicate in the head, even while not dating (Matthew 5, 1 Corinthians 7).
Think about that...cont..
Cont...
ReplyDeleteTwo, the closet Christian that believes but is following the secular route and fornicating.
One needs to ponder.
If you stick with this person outside of Christ there is no guarantee they will come to Christ (1 Corinthians 7, 2 Corinthians 6).
You risk ageing and becoming less attractive if/when you do decide to marry ‘Christian’.
Many men do not like it when they sense have been rejected and later the woman is much older and less attractive and leaves one as a lost option.
I dislike it.
If you have children with the non-Christian, it is less likely that the children will eventually be saved.
Do you want to spend your earthly life, in this present realm with those you may very well have no everlasting future with?
Both these groups, by not dating Christian men, and/or by ignoring Christian men for a ‘better’ option, career or because of social reasons, are although not the primary cause, besides their own potential sin, are effecting single men to potentially sin because of little options with Christian women.
I am not playing Adam here and blaming the woman. Each man will be judged for his own sin, independently, but my point stands.
It is not true that most Christian men prefer porn over actual women. I know I have heard and read studies that some men prefer the cop-out of porn to a relationship, but many, many Christian men are not like that...period.
Lack of willingness to dialogue with a Christian man one likes, perhaps secretly, is a red flag.
I do not buy the ‘I don’t want to hurt him’ argument. If you have rejected the man already, he is already hurt if he likes you.
I reason this is more about the female protecting self. And why is that, exactly?
If the man as not yet sold you emotionally enough to commit to him at all, even as a friend with potential, for example, have you considered that maybe you have not given the man a significant chance to win your heart?
Remember that pre-existing conditions and social rules can have a Christian man virtually written off at the start. But is this Biblical?
I realize that intellectual arguments don’t cause (primarily) romantic feelings.
I am not completely stupid here...Winking smile
But whose rules are you following? Consider we are also influenced by demonic beings to sin.
Acts 4; heed to God and not man.