Yes, they did video tape it too.

On August 30, 2009 I had the privilege of giving the weekly sermon for CCPC. I used the book of Galatians, chapter 1 for my text to get across the point that, just like the believers in Galatia, we try to “augment” or “upgrade” the Gospel by inserting our own righteousness. Our friends, kids, and the the watching world see this and rightly want little part of it. Here is a link to the mp3 if you want to listen. I could not get everything in that I wanted, but I trust that God will use it for His glory. Drop me a comment if you have thoughts or questions.

Creation

In the past who knows how many years, the notion of a God creating the entire universe has been thoroughly mocked and ridiculed from several angles, most notably from the scientific establishment. As a result, I believe a lot of pastors, and their parishioners, shy away from discussion on creation. While I do not advocate that Christians become hard core Intelligent Design proponents, they do need to understand that if God did not in fact create the universe, then the rest of their faith is worthless. If God did not create it all, then we should worship whoever/whatever did (similar to how many atheists worship at the altar of evolution).

Fall

The fall of mankind is also a foreign concept to a lot of Christians, theologically and practically. Theologically the general consensus is that people are good and that society (and/or something else like religion) makes them go bad. This is quite contrary to the clear teaching of scripture. But even if we intellectually assent to the depravity of mankind, our actions tend to say otherwise. We attribute bad things to God, chance,  or others. We attribute  good things to ourselves like somehow we actually deserve them because we are such good people. We often subtly infer that our holiness achieves merit before God, forgetting that even our best works are like filthy rags.

Some think the fall only affected pieces of us as opposed to the whole. Just the body (evidenced by disease) and the soul (because we need a savior right?), but not the mind (because we all know that we each have Vulcan logic and are always right).

But one of the main issues that people do not like preaching about our fallenness is that it makes people unhappy thinking that they are so bad and nasty. The goal of Christianity is to be happy, right? Wrong.

Consummation

We do not often discuss consummation in the redemptive plan because it involves several topics that our modern minds do not want to deal with.

Kingdom: The consummation is of God’s eternal Kingdom. As such, there is a call for us to be servants in that Kingdom. We associate this servanthood with slavery, totally neglecting the fact that Christ came as s servant to us and told us to do likewise. This involves sacrificing our desires for those of the King. This is not something we want to do, as we spend the majority of our lives trying to build our own kingdoms.

Heaven: Christians have a misconception of what heaven is based on plenty of movies,  media, books, and other venues other than scripture itself, not to mention the widespread heritical belief in some sort of Christian reincarnation. Plenty of Health/Wealth teachers out there certainly teach that you can have your best life now, and society (with its glitz, glamour, and toys) does not want us to think or yearn for heaven. Once you talk about heaven, you need to talk about…

Hell: A very uncomforatble subject especially when you are subtlely mocked with the question “Do you really mean that (their personally significant person) is going to hell?” Actually, yes, I do mean that and I wish it was some other way. The Bible speaks of a literal, conscious, eternal torment called hell. Of course, if you skip the Fall, then you don’t need a hell, but then you don’t need the item talked about the most:

Redemption

Redemption gets a lot of press, and rightfully so because of the unfathomable grace of God shown towards believers in Christ. But if there was no fall, we would not need a redeemer. If there was a fall and we could save ourselves, then we would have personal redemption. If we are redeemed then left on our own, then there may not be a need for a consummation. We often neglect what we are truly being saved from, and what we are being saved to.

Well, those are some thoughts.

I was a lot more relaxed this time, even though I had less time to prepare. One of the main considerations I addressed is how we “dehumanize” people before and/or during the process of murdering (and also being angry at) them. Have a listen and let me know how anger and dehumanization play out in your life.

• Anne graduated from Preschool today. She had two excellent teachers this year and is sad to be done. Makes me wonder if she will be like Jason in Foxtrot. She was very beautiful in the dress her Grandma got her.
• We have been house hunting and found what we hope will be our next accommodations. We put in an offer which was accepted, but contingent on the sellers closing on another house. It has been a while since we bought a house, but amazingly enough, I think the process is even longer in Maryland compared to NewYork.
• Anne got pneumonia today. Very sad. So she will be taking antibiotics for a little while. No clue where she got it from and we hope that no other kids get/got it.
• I started another blog revolving around my coding for the MMORPG I play. Knowing me, I will probably update that one more than this..
• We are getting plugged into our church. I have been periodically helping lead the home group we go to. We love our home group, and we have felt warmly accepted into the community. I managed to get out skiing once with some of them. I think I will miss winter down here.
• Work continues to go well. Just hired someone to work under me and in the process of hiring another (in case anyone wants to send me a resume). I am really enjoying the Zend Framework but unfortunately I had to drop the smarty templates as they were killing the speed. Our hardware has killer I/O but awful CPU speed.
• On my daily commute I have been reading a very good book: As For Me and My House. I wish I had read it while in grad school. I know it would have helped me better understand myself and the stresses I place upon Camille. Better late than never. It is written in a very poetic style (not my style) which took a bit to get used to. While at home, I have been reading Fit Bodies Fat Minds. Another highly recommended read. It is not poetic and more my reading style.
• We have not gone to the movies in a while now. I think the last movie we saw was Children of Men. We did rent some interesting films though. An Inconvenient Truth, Who Killed the Electric Car, and Thank You For Smoking. They raise interesting questions, especially for a stats minded person like myself. The first 2 are more of the documentary type. The last one can get you thinking about how media and sophistry pervade and sway our culture.

So, hopefully Camille will post here soon to give everyone an update on some of the other important things going on in our lives.