THE JOYS OF CAR OWNERSHIP PART 2

Lesson #4: "Persist in Prayer". 

And her father returned to the park the next morning with a leaf blower and persistent prayer. 

And after several hours of searching, when he found the one and only key to her cute little VW convertible, he screamed "Yes!" and called to a sweet older couple walking close by, "Rejoice with me for I have found the key which had been lost!"

And the older couple kindly obliged.

And I literally cried. And not just because I knew I wasn't going to have to pay hundreds of dollars to break into Sarah's car, have it towed somewhere, and then have a key made from scratch.

It was because I learned some things about prayer today.

Which in itself, at the metalevel, was an answer to my persistent prayer for the last few months - "Lord, teach me how to pray."

(P.S. It is still a mystery how the key fob fell off the key ring in the first place. There's no readily apparent rational explanation.)

THE JOYS OF CAR OWNERSHIP

Sarah got a lesson today after school: Intro to The Joys of Car Ownership. 

It was a rare November day with temperatures hitting the upper 70s, and since Sarah has owned her VW Bug convertible for just a few (cold) weeks, she was looking for an excuse to drive somewhere with the top down.

I suggested taking the dogs to Mill Race Park on the other side of town.

The dogs were not sure what to make of open air driving, but Sarah and I were in 7th heaven.

Lesson #1: "There's a reason people love convertibles."

I admit I have been a bit skeptical of this car. It was purchased not because it was practical or got great gas mileage or was rated high in safety. 

No, the only thing that really mattered was that it was "cute".

It had some issues from day one - most notably the fact that it only had one key. Not a big deal, though - we all agreed - we just need to prioritize getting a copy made soon. 

Other little issues have cropped up since Sarah brought it home: touchy power windows, the vinyl detaching from the inside of the driver's door, and a little puddle on the passenger seat after a heavy rain.

But all of that faded into the background as we buzzed through downtown Columbus with the top down in Sarah's cute car.

We parked, Sarah put the top up, and locked her Bug up tight before we headed toward the pond at the center of the park.

And what an afternoon to be outside! We ran through leaves, walked across the covered bridge, and roamed the banks of the river.

After at least an hour of time and a mile of distance, the dogs were tuckered and we were ready to get back to the car. 

Mission Accomplished: Perfect afternoon in the bag.

It was time for Lesson #2.

As we approached the car, Sarah went to pull her key from the side of her purse and found the key ring empty! 

Lesson #2: "You really should have prioritized getting a second key."

@#%*!!!!! 💩

We retraced our steps - through half a million fallen leaves - until we lost all light and all hope. 

All to no avail. Melissa rescued us and the dogs at sunset. 

Tomorrow morning I will pray and look again, hopefully aided by a magnet or a metal detector. 

We are hoping to avoid Lesson #3: "How much it costs to get a key made when there is no original to copy."

A MEME

I made a meme about Calvinism. 

Specifically its doctrine of exhaustive divine determinism. (Which Calvinists tend to call God's "sovereignty".)

R.C. Sproul once said that God has meticulously decreed and controlled every atom in the universe throughout all time. And if there was a single "rogue molecule", then God's sovereignty would be negated. 

So in the Calvinist system, the thoughts, actions, and words of every human to ever live were all decreed by God before the foundation of the world.

And yet somehow humans exercise enough "free will" to make them guilty of the sins they commit, and God - though He is the first cause of all things - is not held responsible as the author of those sins. 

On the contrary, the Calvinist God is worthy of all glory because He has pre-elected a few human beings to experience His love and grace for eternity. (The others He created for the sole purpose of damning - for the sins they committed by His decree from the foundation of the world.)

Not sure how all that fits together exactly!

To me it looks like this:

(In the original Simpsons episode, Homer was toasting "alcohol".)

NOT A FAN OF JC

This is a follow up to yesterday's post about author Dennis McKinsey and his apparent obsession with proving the Bible to be full of errors. While I was on his Amazon page for his masterpiece The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy, curiosity drove me to read some of the reviews. 

I discovered that McKinsey's audience is happy to consume what he is feeding them. Lots of 5 star reviews!

Below you will find a review fairly representative of McKinsey's readers and their impressive analytical skills.

(I found it equal parts hilarious, tragic, and frustrating.)

[McKinsey] shows that the Bible is so loaded with errors that it can't possibly have been guided by God. It is a purely human work, and a lousy one at that. McKinsey proves that beyond all doubt. A few specifics about JC (Jesus Christ):

He spoke mostly about morality and about his intimate relationship with God, but his behavior was anything but what "God's son" should be. He was rude, impatient, violent at times, insulting, and quite anti-family. Bibliolaters who say Christianity is the last hope for the traditional family apparently don't know beans about JC. And JC's moral teachings such as the SCILF (Sermon on the Contradictorily Identified Landscape Feature: Matthew-mountain but Luke-plain) said very little that's not implied by the Golden Rule. And despite desperate assertions by fans of JC, he was NOT in the earth for 3 days; Friday night to Sunday morning is 1.5 days, even with the Jewish way of counting days.

Seems like he learned a lot!

I don't know about you, but this almost makes me want to read the book for myself. 

Unfortunately, it's $60.

PAUL'S "MISQUOTE"

As I was doing some research for my sermon today, I came across a quote from an author I had never heard of: Dennis McKinsey.

Apparently McKinsey has made a career out of criticizing the Bible. Over the last several decades he has maintained some sort of journal on "Biblical Errancy" and produced an "encyclopedia" filled with all the mistakes he has located in the Scriptures. 

But the snippet I read from McKinsey was rather unimpressive for a self-professed "scholar" of the Bible. It was in regard to Paul making his farewell speech to the Ephesians in Acts 20 which concludes with this line in v.35: "In everything, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus Himself: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

Everyone knows Jesus said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive", but I have to admit that I had never realized this sentence never shows up in any of the Gospels. It's found only here in Acts, quoted secondhand by Paul.

This is the sort of "mistake" that catches McKinsey's eye and engages his sharp skills of textual criticism:

"One of the great misquotes of Paul is found in Acts 20:35 where he says: “…ye ought to support the weak and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Nowhere in the New Testament did Jesus make such a statement. Paul’s oratory apparently got away from him."

Did you catch that? It's a "misquote" because the sentence isn't found anywhere in the Gospels! 

It's a safe guess that McKinsey operates with the presupposition that the supernatural does not exist, so one can't blame him for ignoring the fact that Paul claims to have met Jesus on the road to Damascus and then later to have been "taught by Jesus". It seems Paul might have been able to claim he heard things from Jesus that nobody else heard - which makes sense if one believes in the supernatural.

But even if McKinsey refuses to buy into the possibility of the supernatural, surely he does not assume that every single word of Jesus' teachings were recorded in the Gospels? Or that none of Jesus' teachings that didn't get written down by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John could have possibly been preserved and spread by other people? 

In fact, many actual biblical scholars don't believe that Paul necessarily had access to ANY of the Gospels during the lifetime of his ministry. The early church grew in an oral culture and the only Scripture it held collectively was the Old Testament.

Now THAT is something to ponder. 

TEACH ME TO PRAY

There are so many great books out there with useful teaching about prayer, but if you are looking to grow in your prayer life, today I offer a simple but life-changing approach to prayer that has impacted my spiritual life immensely over the last 4 months. (And I am just getting started!)

And it is straightforward: If you truly want to learn how to pray, do what the disciples did and ask Jesus Himself to teach you. (Luke 11:1-4)

So each day I make this request of God: “Lord, teach me to pray”. And then I listen as closely as I can. 

It sounds too simple to be useful, but this practice has become a check on:

• My sincerity: Do I REALLY want to grow in prayer?
• My ignorance: There ARE ever deeper levels of prayer to explore!
• My dependence: Prayer doesn’t come naturally - I NEED guidance.

If you want to try this for yourself, here’s a practical tip: To make “Lord, teach me to pray” part of your daily routine, set a reminder on your phone or use a reliable cue like the moment your feet hit the floor first thing in the morning or when you pour a cup of coffee or brush your teeth. 

And if you DO choose to take this as a daily habit yourself, I would love to hear your experience with it … a few weeks or months or years from now!  

There is so much to learn about prayer! Thankfully, Jesus is a patient teacher.

One day at a time.

EAT LIKE AN ADULT

In his book Reframe Your Brain, Scott Adams talks about how it is often possible to change your actions and habits simply by reframing your reality.

For example, he speaks of giving up alcohol by moving from the familiar frame of "Alcohol is a beverage to enjoy" to a new frame of "Alcohol is poison". 

Over time, by identifying alcohol in his own mind with something as negative as poison, Adams simply lost interest in drinking. 

Throughout the book, he suggests various reframes to combat common life challenges, but he says the real power is in finding your own. They can pop up at any time and, if they are "sticky" for you, they can shape your focus and your habits.

I am beginning to test one that I hope will help me eat healthier on a daily basis (and stop putting on extra pounds). 

My usual frame has been: I am trying to eat healthy.

My new frame is: I am going to eat like an adult.

The truth of the matter is that although my diet IS probably healthier than the average American's, I eat ice cream almost daily and I snack on way too much candy. 

Since I haven't been able to kick my ice cream and candy habits by telling myself these things are "unhealthy", I will be curious to see if reframing them as "childish" might help. 

I am just getting started, but "childish" does seem sticky to me and somehow I feel my desire to "be a grown up" might prove stronger than my desire to be healthy.

Not sure why! But Adams says that reframes don't have to make sense or even be true to work. They just have to redirect your thinking.