Coram Deo Blog
Archive for September 2008
30 September 2008 at 2:47 pm by Bob Thune · culture, money
So obviously the recent (ongoing?) economic meltdown spurred by bad mortgage credit is on center stage in our national consciousness. There are a number of different viewpoints on the matter. Certainly none of us wants to see economic chaos, because it takes a toll on everyone. But on the other hand, perhaps what’s going on is a good wake-up call to a nation of consumers who have idolized wealth, success, and prestige. As one of my friends commented this week, “Our greed is about to destroy us.”
A friend of mine on Facebook posted a link to this commentary by a scholar at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. You may or may not agree with his conclusions, but I always like a guy who disagrees with the politicians (who always care more about re-election than leadership).
Thoughts?
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25 September 2008 at 2:32 pm by Bob Thune · announcement, city renewal
For about three years now, we’ve had the privilege of partnering with our good friends at Mosaic Community Development to serve the disadvantaged and homeless. Life on the Brick, a Monday-night community meal, has been one of the main connecting points for people within Coram Deo to get a feel for MCD and to get to know some new homeless friends. As our church grows, it becomes harder and harder to communicate all the great opportunities we have to serve the city. So this blog post is intended to invite those of you who are newer to Coram Deo to experience Life on the Brick.
Here is how Sonya Gray, LOB coordinator and Coram Deo deacon, describes her vision for Life on the Brick:
Our desire is that the table would truly be a place of celebration – that all are invited and, over a shared meal, space is created for God to move and for gospel transformation to occur-for all. This invite includes not just those who are poor and struggling, but everyone in our church family as well. Previously, visitors were discouraged from coming down unless they were considering committing themselves to relationships (to discourage a “soup kitchen” feel and to protect our guests). We are realizing more and more that we are missing out on valuable relationships and wish to create more of an open door. So, if you would like to stop in on a Monday night, or invite your MC to share a meal with us, please feel free… Thank you all for all that you have done to love this city, and especially the MCD community. You have set a beautiful example for churches in Omaha to follow – loving those who are deemed unlovable, with the love that Christ has poured on you. I believe Omaha can be transformed through the power of the gospel that is displayed in your words and deeds.
Life on the Brick happens every Monday night from 5:30 until the hungry are fed. Location: MCD’s humble headquarters on South 13th Street. You can participate at whatever level you desire: show up early to help set up and serve, stay late to help clean, or just come to eat and develop relationships with some new friends. Consider this your invitation. Look at your calendar and set aside a Monday sometime in the next few months to come share the table with us. (If you’re planning to bring a group of friends or a whole MC, call ahead so we can plan appropriately for food. You can find contact info on the MCD website.)
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21 September 2008 at 8:20 am by Bob Thune · religion
Anyone who wishes to deal honestly with pluralism – and with the objection that no one religion has exclusive truth – must be familiar with the work of John Hick, an eminent philosopher of religion who is the leading academic mind on the subject. A few years ago, I spent the better part of two weeks in the library, immersing myself in Hick’s work and analyzing his thought. I quoted briefly from Hick in my sermon this morning; but those readers who favor a more scholarly inquiry may benefit from reading this research paper.
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20 September 2008 at 10:06 pm by Bob Thune · sermon, theology
Saturday nights are inevitably a time for me to hone my sermon preparation… usually by jettisoning lots of good stuff that I either don’t have time to say or that doesn’t fit the “flow” I’ve settled on. Sometimes the blog is a good place for that stuff to land.
This weekend we’re tackling the objection of exclusivity. I am contending that Christianity is actually one of the most inclusive world views. Yes, there are obnoxious Christians who see it as their moral duty to pick fights with everyone who doesn’t agree with them. (Usually they were the weird kids with the Star Trek lunchbox and the stonewashed jeans who got beat up a lot in elementary school, and this is their way of getting even with the world.) However, a true, robust view of the gospel leads to a very inclusive spirit. One way of demonstrating this is by looking at the biblical storyline:
Creation: Every human being is made in God’s image, with inherent dignity, value, and worth (Genesis 1:27). Therefore Christians affirm humanity, and we value whatever truth human beings happen to discover. All truth is God’s truth, so we embrace it wherever we find it – even when those who hold it violently oppose the God who created it.
Fall: Humanity is bent toward sin and selfishness (Isaiah 53:6). Therefore Christians have a healthy skepticism toward human nature. We question the motives of politicians, CEO’s, pastors, and publicans. Most importantly, we have a healthy realism about ourselves. The Fall teaches us to expect that Christians will not always live up to their ideals, and that non-Christians will in many ways demonstrate superior virtue. We are not under the delusion that being a follower of Jesus makes one morally superior to others. Jesus doesn’t save good Christians who do the right thing; he saves undeserving sinners by his free grace.
Redemption: Jesus is the Savior of all men (1 Timothy 4:10). He is out to bring redemption to every culture, judging the elements of sin within it while redeeming every vestige of beauty and truth and meaning. This means that while the content of the Christian gospel remains unchanged from culture to culture, the forms it takes are incredibly diverse and inclusive. Christian worship in South America is distinctly South American; Christian worship in China is distinctly Chinese; Christian worship in Africa is distinctly African; and yet Christian worship everywhere is distinctly Christian. Compare this, for instance, with the cultural straitjacket imposed by Islam: Islamic converts tend to lose their distinctive cultural identity as they don a hijab, start learning Arabic, and enroll their kids in the local madrasah. The cultural adaptability of Christianity is evidence of its dramatically inclusive nature.
Restoration: God is out to renew this material world (Revelation 21:1). Therefore, Christians fight for justice and work to make the world a better place – for everyone, not just for those who share our worldview. “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).
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16 September 2008 at 7:21 am by Bob Thune · announcement, community
We had some healthy, robust interaction last Sunday night at the Brazen Head Irish Pub. Thanks to all those who came out – especially for being good and generous customers. The folks at the Brazen Head have been real good to us, and we want to return the favor by increasing their profit margin whenever we show up.
Bob vs. World is simply a way to provide a more dialogical format for hashing through objections to Christianity. Any question or issue is fair game. We’ll do it again on September 28, so write down your questions and invite your friends.
New Belgium Brewery’s 1554 is the official beer of Bob vs. World. Or at least of Bob (thanks to Will). Also, it’s all-you-can-eat fish and chips on Sunday nights. Lane F. and I put away our fair share of fish after last week’s gathering. You should try some.
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15 September 2008 at 12:50 pm by Kendal Haug · announcement
An announcement from Michele Senkbile:
Tuesday evening of this week, (September 16th) the Ugandan Children’s Choir will be singing at Benson High School at 7pm. Some of our missional communities are already helping with food and serving the meal, but we wanted to make sure that our community knew that:
- These kids are awesome and can sing like it’s nobody’s business
- It’s an open invite for anyone to who would like to come, no charge
I had the opportunity to see these 30 children perform last night in Iowa and almost cried through the entire performance. (Raging pregnancy hormones could have something to do with this, but I don’t think that’s the reason, entirely.)
Benson High School is located at 52nd and North West Radial Hwy… performance is at 7pm. It would be great if our community could come out and encourage these kids.
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11 September 2008 at 4:34 pm by Kendal Haug · hannahisms
- In your life you will hit one or two hard line drives. That is about it. After that, pack it up and go home. Chase the dog and chase the wife and have fun.
- My subjective experience of objective reality does not make objective reality true.
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8 September 2008 at 3:28 pm by Kendal Haug · music
Thanks to everyone who came out and made Saturday a great night of music. The weather moved the concert inside, but it was such a warm and fun environment…a surreal house show! Here is a review of the evening from the refined opinion of Lane Freemyer:
I first knew Luke Pettipoole, lead vocalist of The Envy Corps, as my friend Megan’s unassuming long-distance boyfriend. His laid back, prep-school scruffiness pegs him as the twenty-something hipster he is, but it is not until you’ve absorbed the Envy Corps’ brilliant debut Dwell that you recognize him as a bona fide indie rocker worthy of the fawning adulation so unsuitable and embarrassing for the indie righteous. In fact, you’ll be left scratching your head at the band’s continued low profile and zealously proselytizing anyone who will listen about their talent. Thus it was with great anticipation I attended Luke’s solo house show this past Saturday night.
This was a Luke Pettipoole show, not an Envy Corps show. Gone were the electric guitars, atmospheric synths and ferocious drums of the full band; this was just a man and his guitar, joined occasionally by (now wife) Megan on vocals and once by fanboys Kendal and Evan for a bluesy, dare-I-say countrified version of Story Problem. Though Luke played a number of EC songs, the spare instrumentation and unadorned vocals gave them a very different quality than the exuberant, jangly assault of the full band- the songs more leisurely, the delivery more thoughtful and the emotion more nuanced. Personally, I enjoy the electric versions for the joyful contrast they provide against the melancholic, bemused weariness of Luke’s lyrics. However, the acoustic versions provided the opportunity to listen with a fresh ear to familiar songs, and two were exceptional- Rooftop, a song Luke and Megan originally composed together as Clive & Gwendolyn and again sang together on Saturday, never sounded better; and Baby Teeth, a song about a broken man assessing a broken relationship, was more heartrending in the rawness of the setting. We were also treated to a number of unreleased songs Luke has written over the years, along with anecdotes about the origins and inspirations of his compositions.
Overall, it was a great night of music and an entertaining tour through the mind and history of a talented songwriter and lyricist. It definitely primed my appetite for another Envy Corps show; fortunately, they’ll be playing the Waiting Room here in Omaha on October 13th. Come out and support good music in Omaha!
-Lane
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7 September 2008 at 4:23 pm by Bob Thune · church history, culture, theology
For academically-minded readers desiring to reflect in a more thorough and detailed manner on oppression and injustice, I recommend two books that I’ve been perusing this week: The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Notre Dame’s Mark Noll and For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and The End of Slavery by Baylor’s Rodney Stark. Both these books have given color and shape to my formerly simplistic thinking about slavery.
Noll is a historian, and his book makes the case that the Civil War was at its roots a theological crisis. Both abolitionists and slaveholders appealed to the Bible to justify their points of view, creating a crisis of faith for the average layperson – after all, when opposing sides both claim biblical authority, how can the common Christian discern who is right? Stark’s specialty is sociology, and his tome is a tightly nuanced and well-reasoned exposition of monotheism (and especially Christianity) as a determinative influence in both the development of science and the abolition of slavery. I offered this quote from Stark this morning: “Of all the world’s religions, including the three great monotheisms, only in Christianity did the idea develop that slavery was sinful and must be abolished.”
The breadth of Stark’s work sheds light on some aspects of slavery that have been under-appreciated by historians. For instance, because of the influence of Catholicism, slavery in the Spanish and French colonies was much more humane than slavery in the British colonies. In the French colonies, “slaves were exempted from work on Sundays and holy days, with masters being subject to fines or even to the confiscation of their slaves for violating this provision.” Spanish colonists followed a similar code, with the result that slaves had 87 days off every year (more than some of you take as free men and women!). The British colonies “had no tradition of slave codes to restrain master-slave relations… since the colonies were fully under the control of a slave-owning ‘ruling class’… the laws enacted were a planter’s dream and a slave’s nightmare.”
As I observed this morning, Christians in the American South did use the Bible to justify slavery. But Stark’s work takes much of the punch out of the oft-repeated objection that Christianity (and/or Western colonization) is to blame for all the evils of slavery. In Stark’s own words: “The excesses of political correctness have all but erased the awareness that slavery was once nearly universal to all societies able to afford it, and that only in the West did significant moral opposition ever arise and lead to abolition. Unfortunately, the typical discussion of slavery, especially in textbooks, gives the impression that it was a peculiarly European and especially American vice, and no notice is taken of the extent of slavery in times past, or of the substantial amount of slavery that continues in many parts of the non-Christian world.”
Perhaps the most challenging and humbling effect all this reading has had on me is to challenge my cultural arrogance. It is easy to wax eloquent in 2008 about the evils of slavery. But had I lived 200 years ago, at a time when slavery was an accepted institution all over the world, in a culture marked by theological confusion over the biblical teaching about slavery, in an economy largely driven by slavery, I wonder: would I have been on the right side of things? I am not so sure. Sin makes it difficult to see past our cultural blinders… and these books demonstrate how strong the cultural blinders were for our forefathers on the issue of slavery. We dare not condemn them too harshly, for they are much like us.
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5 September 2008 at 9:51 am by Will Walker · announcement, music
Um, the Luke Pettipoole House Show is tomorrow night at 7pm. Luke is a very talented, major label artist (read: good music). On top of that, the venue is worth the ticket price … a beautiful, serene setting with a view.
Don’t have tickets yet? No worries, you can get one at the door. So consider a bit of wise counsel: DO NOT MISS THIS SHOW!
If you have a lawn chair or blanket, bring it and come on out to the Whealy’s house, our own little outdoor amphitheater.
Need that link again to hear some of his music? Go here. Or maybe you are more like Christian Gray and need someone to personally burn you a cd so that you will listen and get excited. Well, I can’t burn you a cd, but here is the next best thing.
Rooftop
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Keys to Good Living
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See you tomorrow!
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