So many sermons are boring and there is no reason they have to be; What Sherman said about needing to recover the art of storytelling deserves lots of attention at every seminary. ("Theology is in the story and the story is theology.") Because pastors are responsible for the theology people are absorbing at church, then they better make their sermons less stiff, irrelevant and boring because the congregation will just tune out and won't absorb anything. Sad to say, I fell asleep every time Howard Marshal opened his mouth; I didn't want to, it just happened. He is a gifted scholar, but as fall as I am concerned, he should stick to writing because he wasn't a gifted oral communicator. The Christian message would fall flat if it was always presented like that because you need to captivate an audience unless you have a captive audience. I don't think people need their pastor to put on a show, but being real and speaking from the heart captivates people.
Someone told me that in the Middle East, people think a rabbi is really smart and holy if they can't understand a word they say, and that it is a big compliment if you tell a speaker that they made things too complex for you. But I think the opposite is true; because that is not what Jesus did.

I'm grappling with the issue of heresy. I think it is insidious and needs to be confronted every step of the way, but if we can overlook out of brotherly concern the relgious differences of other faiths, how can we take uncompromising stands with our own people when their conclusions don't jive with tradition / our own interpretations? I mean, can we respect them, and strongly disagree while basically treating them like someone from another religious tradition, or should you be much more strict and confrontational with people from your own religion to safegaurd the faith? I am not sure. My tendency is to be more lenient with an outsider... but I'm not sure that is fair. I guess I expect more from fellow Christians, and get more easily disappointed.

No wonder that the Jews and Romans didn’t know what to do with Jesus. His message was so uncomfortable, so radical, and so unlike how we usually live our lives. I know the message makes me uncomfortable because there are plenty of times I don’t feel like letting other people into my world- sometimes I just want my space. Then after a bit, I feel lonely and want to mix with other people again.

I’m reading a book called Three Came Home written by a prisoner in a Japanese prison camp near Kuching during WWII. The kids who grew up in the camp were so unselfish and generous. They shared every little thing, especially food whenever they got an extra bit. You would think the opposite would be true, that because they had so little, they would hoard what they had since an additional egg could mean the matter of life and death. But they had such close bonds they really prefered sharing; they didn’t even know any other way to be. The kids in the Kuching POW camp had no choice but to live in community; it was imposed on them; they lived in one large unpartitioned room and couldn't leave the camp. But it shaped them into caring, giving human beings.

Giving for the sake of giving ought to feel good, while hoarding should make you sad because it definitely impoverishes the soul. But what is it about giving that makes it so hard to trust the process? Usually the more we have, the less willing we are to share. I think I am that way often enough; it’s like I think something might be too good to give away. Other times I feel in competition, like if someone gives something, I have to match it somehow. That’s no good either. You have to give for the right reasons.
As I mentioned in class, it makes me sad and fusterated to know there are so many problems out there in the big world. It is really hard to know how to help. This disturbs me now more than ever because I am not generating any income at the moment, and when that is the case, I don't have much voice in how our family money should be spent. Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't go back to teaching just to have the money to donate.

We touched on Jesus as a woman last night. Of course God had a choice, but why make the least effective one? Even today, if I really want to get something done, I have my husband make a phone call or write a letter. People will listen to him, when I could have been saying the same thing and been ignored over and over again. That's just the way it is. Instead of thinking, why didn't God have the messiah be a woman, we should continue to be amazed that God showed up at all. He was already very marginalized as a Jewish carpenter from Nazareth, in country under Roman occupation.

I really enjoyed hearing the presentations... What Charles said will really stick with me- that the apostles put their lives on the line so that we could hear the gospel, as opposed to modern authors who would never write a thing if they didn't think they would get paid.

Skipping to the lecture, Sherman quoted Augustine who said, "God is one, and three are God." That thought is enough to keep my brain busy for a very long time. Of course, that's the Trinity in a nutshell. But the Trinity is so hard for me to get a really good conception of... I have sung, "...God in 3 persons, blessed Trinity," since I was a child, but somehow one God with 3 personalities makes God sound like Siamese twins/triplets.
I'm wondering very blasphomously if Jesus is somewhere out in the universe on other planets, helping those cultures along- appearing to those "people" in the "flesh", helping them progress and getting them back into relationship with God. We can't be the only fallen world forever and ever in all space and throughout all time. I guess my mind is thinking about Jesus' task, or job description as part of God- the part that has to help three dimentional creation get to know their Father. Who knows, we might have been the millionth planet Jesus was born into and nasty creation may have failed to recognize each and every time. Poor Jesus, if we are the only world He incarnated into, we were mean enough to him for ten planets put together.
Ugh, I am way out there, just imagining... it's enough to think about what we do actually know; that 2000 years ago, God cared enough to spend time with us, as us. It blows my mind that Josephus and Philo have historical documentation of the Ressurection. Okay, so that in and of itself might not prove Jesus was God; but it goes along way towards proving the Christian message! It's too bad churches aren't "talking up" Josephus and Philo's reports-- Some people don't actually think the Ressurection happenned, but they want to believe it did. When talking to agnostics, I have said (maybe wrongly!), that they didn't have to believe in the Ressurection if they just couldn't... but they still could believe in Jesus as the Messiah, our Savior and Son of God.

I'm thinking of the big beautiful world of blogs I didn't know existed... the first time I heard the expression was when some guys were busted in Singapore for blogging and stirring up racial disharmony. Anyway, I read about it in the newspaper, and thought it was a funny word and guessed it might just be something for computer geeks. Bloging it looks like it might be the wave of the future- because I know from being a teacher, that if you want a child to get excited about written work, there needs to be an audience of some sort. I used to give my students the chance to read their work to either a buddy or the whole class everyday. And for a real treat they could go to the office and read to the principal. They put so much more of themselves into assignments because what they did was no longer done in isolation. We really are social creatures that need to be connected.

Random things that stood out in the lecture:

It always seemed like a misnomer to call Jesus the "Son of Man" when he was the Son of God! So it clarifies things a bit to think of "Son of Man" as a type of prophetic address/contrasting our human nature with God/an escatological term, associated with suffering, judgment and vindication.
And I found it interesting to that the Jews had such a hard time calling Caesar "Lord". The poor Jews, what a bind to be in- prisoners of conscious when everyone else could just say to themselves, "hey, I'll call Caesar whatever he wants as long as he leaves me alone." I'm curious about what Jesus would say about that, where he would stand on the issue. On one hand, He didn't even want anyone calling Him 'Good" because that was reserved for the Father in Heaven... but on the other hand, would he want His people persecuted for not giving in on this issue? I really don't think I would advise anyone I love to say or not say something to someone if it meant they could get killed. I'm sure Jesus would forgive anyone that crumbled under that kind of pressure, but I doubt that crumbling would make Him proud.

About glimpses of Truth in other cultures/religions, it makes sense to me. Isn't God at work contextually all over creation so that no one is left out? He has to talk to us in ways we understand, or what good will it do? However, if He's using baby-talk with us when we are infants (metaphorically), that doesn't mean he won't quote Shakesphere to us one day when we are ready for it. I guess I think he takes us where we currently are and helps turn us to the direction we need to go. For myself, as a lifelong Christian, the more education I am exposed to, the more I know I don't know. Maybe as individuals and entire cultures, we are only responsible for what we know, but God is in charge of our learning process and the judge of how we are progressing. Finally, Jesus said whoever did the will of His Father were his brothers. Surely people like Gandhi are kin to Jesus no matter what their official religion is.