“Born on this date in 1834 in the small village of Aremzyani, in what was then considered Siberia, Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev would go on, in 1869, to publish the first periodic table of the chemical elements. Mendeleev used the periodicity he’d observed in the properties of then-known elements to accurately predict many of the properties of germanium, gallium, and scandium, which had not yet been discovered. Mendeleev died in St. Petersburg in 1907, at the age of 72. Element number 101 is named mendelevium in his honor.”

-Via Make

It is the second day of fasting. Often it is said that fasting increases spiritual awareness and focus. I can find no biblical support for this notion and I find that distractions nag at my willing mind as strong and as frequently as ever. Perhaps, however, I am simply more aware of the ways in which the various scintillations that I subject myself to are a siren song making shipwreck of my faith.

Whichever it is, the clear call from God is that I must devote all my attention to him. Only when I am “all ears” will I have the ears to hear.

“The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

- G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (via Alan Jacob’s Tumblr)

“When it comes to  cultural creativity, innocence is not a virtue. The more each of us knows  about our cultural domain, the more likely we are to create something new  and worthwhile.”

-From Culture Making, by Any Crouch

As I have been reading Culture Making, this thought has popped up a few times.  The idea that we should root ourselves in the various traditions and skills of the culture around us is an idea that I am somewhat sympathetic to since it encourages us to be excellent in our given fields.  As I read, however, I have trouble thinking up biblical support for this point.  If anything, arguments to the contrary are ready at hand: what of Paul’s condemnation of the excellencies of this world in 1 Cor 1 and 2? What of God’s demand that the people of Israel absolutely destroy all aspects of Canaanite culture?  And yet, what of Augustine’s point that it was not that scriptures that taught him the language by which he can read the scriptures?  Where do we draw the line between continuity and discontinuity with the world around us?

“The ways by which the truth of the gospel comes  home to the heart and conscience of this or that person are always mysterious.   They cannot be programs and they cannot be calculated. But  where a community is living in alert faithfulness, they happen.”

From The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Lesslie Newbigin.

I can just hear Billy’s voice as I read this, urging us to hold the line.  It appears sometimes that there is no one being saved, that we must do something, start some program, trick a few people in.  But there is hope and encouragement in this: “where a community is living in alert faithfulness, they happen.”

“One  can always travel hopefully if there is a reliable track and good ground  for believing that it leads to the destination. The track on which we walk  is one that disappears from sight before it reaches the destination. We  may have a vision of the peak we are aiming for, but we do not see the  track all the way to it. It goes down into the dark valley of death, and we,  with all our works, go that way. We can go forward with confidence because   Jesus has gone that way before us and has come back from the  deep valley. If he is himself the track, we can go forward confidently  even when the future is hidden.”

From The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, by Lesslie Newbigin.

“The sort of analytical, psychological,   sociological, or neurological knowledge of the working of  another person’s mind is not in any way a step toward the knowing of  another person which we experience in love and friendship. By itself,  it could only lead us away from such knowledge. That truly personal  knowledge only becomes a possibility when I abandon the sovereign  claim of autonomous reason, the claim to know the other person  without that person’s self-communication in speech and act and gesture;   when I am ready to stop my investigations and listen, to be addressed, to be called in question, to be summoned to an adventure  of trust. Natural theology, in other words, is in no way a step on the  way toward the theology which takes God’s self-revelation as its starting  point. It is more likely, in fact, to lead in the opposite direction.”

From The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, by Lesslie Newbigin.

I have always felt a certain discomfort when I am part of some theological conversations.  It is as though all the people in these discussions are talking about God is great detail as though he were not in the room.  Imagine a whole family sitting around the dinner table, talking for hours about exactly what kind of food their father would like to eat, all the while ignoring the father sitting quietly by at the head of the table.

A parable recasts a problem into a new relational light.  We become stuck with one interpretation of life, thinking that perhaps God is unjust.  When we see the situation from afar with finger puppets instead of ourselves, however, the relational principles become clear.  David clearly understood the crime commited in Nathan’s story.  Having the ears to hear the parable involves the next and much more difficult step: realizing where the relational principle of the parable touches our own guilt.  We are the people who beat the kings servants, hide our single mina and refuse the invitation to the wedding.  The pharisees were the pharisees precisely because they knew for certain that the point of the parable was leveled at everyone but them.

“What seems to have happened in our culture is a falling apart, a  disconnection between the subjective and the objective poles. We have  on the one hand the ideal, or shall I call it the illusion, of a kind of  objectivity which is not possible, of a kind of knowledge of what we call  the “facts” which involves no personal commitment, no risk of being  wrong, something which we have merely to accept without question;  and on the other hand a range of beliefs which are purely subjective,  which are, as we say, “true for me,” are “what I feel,” but which are a  matter of personal and private choice. To suggest that these latter beliefs  ought to be accepted as true for all is to be guilty of the unforgivable  sin-dogmatism.”

From The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Lesslie Newbigin

“The curiosity which is always seeking to discover   more seems to be one of the necessary conditions of life. But seeking   is only serious if the seeker is following some clue, has some intuition   of what it is that he seeks, and is willing to commit himself or herself  to following that clue, that intuition. Merely wandering around in a clueless   twilight is not seeking. The relativism which is not willing to speak  about truth but only about “what is true for me” is an evasion of the serious   business of living. It is the mark of a tragic loss of nerve in our  contemporary culture. It is a preliminary symptom of death.”

From The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Lesslie Newbigin.