Revision Blues

So I’m revising my first novel, Darwin. It’s slow going and not nearly as fun as drafting. I know there are different schools of revision, but I’m going to subscribe to the “one-pass” school: I can’t imagine having to sit down with multiple drafts of this book.

Bleh.

Vantage Point

 

(AllPosters)

This movie looked mildly interesting, but after this demolition I don’t think I can sit through the whole thing with a straight face.

Does the Emerging Emperor Have Any Clothes?

Wow. I’m still wrestling with the incisive implications of this letter. For now, I can only stand by my initial comment on the thread:

If emerging Christianity is really going to succeed in its goals, those goals must be ecclesiological rather than theological. Of course, we must have our own individual theologies, but to say that we have found a theology that everyone can agree on is totally naive.

For Serious Readers

I borrowed this from my dad to type up my last post. Now I must have one.

The Reason for Living

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

Ephesians 1:3-10, NRSV

 

It is important to stress that God’s fellow suffering in, through, and under Jesus’ passion is not just God’s way of understanding what we go through. It is God’s own odd way of going about loving us, God’s concrete act of loving in the midst of the most terrible circumstances we can go through. It just that love that can redeem personal identities…from their distorting bondage to past events, for it is God’s love for them that grounds the worth of their lives. Neither the excellence of what they do as measured by some set of rules nor their awesome survival of horrifying events can do that. It is only God’s concrete act of loving them in the midst of the most appalling situations that makes their lives worth living. That alone can justify the time, space and resources they take up by living.

David H. Kelsey, Imagining Redemption. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005). p. 61

iDig: Eluveitie

When I first heard the term “folk metal,” I was thinking something along the lines of this:

(Amazon)

Crossed with this:

Fortunately, it turned out to really be this. Their new album is on iTunes, and if I hadn’t frittered away the $50 iTunes gift card I got for Christmas on stuff like this and this, I’d probably own it right now. Oh well, as long as they have the entire album on their MySpace I can deal.

P.S. I really also dig the sticker on Woody’s guitar.

NOOMA, The (Penal Substitution) Gospel and the Conflict in Emerging Christianity

 

(NOOMA)

All I had to do was skim this review of Rob Bell’s NOOMA series to get the gist of it. Another New Young Calvinist decrying an Emerger because the Emerger didn’t get up and start shouting about penal substitution.

Emergers and the New Young Calvinists (the Driscollites, Deverites and Piperites) are the two most vibrant theological movements in contemporary post-evangelicalism. Yet they operate on two very different assumptions about the fundamental nature of Jesus’ message. They’re in conflict already, but if they continue to grow as they hope they will, the conflict is only going to get worse.

(Jesus Creed)

Personally, as one firmly in the Emerging Camp, I think that while the Emerging “gospel” may be a little bit too broad and bland, the NYC “gospel” is far too narrow and divisive. I think the New Young Calvinists have falsely assumed that a) penal substitution is the essence of the gospel, b) the “scandal of the cross” is equivalent to people’s hesitancy to accept the wrath-satisfaction model of penal substitution and thus c) anyone who doesn’t beat the PS drum is “ashamed of the cross” and “preaching another gospel.”

Even if I didn’t believe that penal substitution is a flawed model (I do), I think I would still be hesitant to reduce the gospel down to such a simple formulation. Of course, if we had a truly biblical model of the atonement (cough) then maybe we wouldn’t have all these issues.

Maybe I should work on that….

Headline: “Predators tell children how to kill themselves”

This makes me sick. What an a-hole.

 Key Quote:

“The purpose of my information is empowerment for competent human beings who have an interest in ending their lives. What’s the problem with that?”

Suicidal people are not “competent.” They are mentally and emotionally disturbed. I don’t know if what he does should be illegal…but the fact that he has such a cavalier attitude about it is quite disturbing itself.

 HT: Al Mohler

The Siren Song of the Epic Fantasy Saga

Flipping through this (sample here) at Borders has got my on one of those fantasy map-making kicks again. It’s always an entertaining diversion.

BDS I: Reading the Bible With the Damned, Part 1

(People’s Seminary)

Chapter one of Bob Ekblad’s book, entitled “Reading Scripture for the Liberation of the Not-Yet Believing” reads as a basic “how-to” guide for leading Bible studies for people on the margins.

On p. 2, he lists three “Common pitfalls to a liberating reading of Scripture.” These pitfalls are 1) domestication, 2) moralism and 3) exemplarism.