The sins of the fathers…

This week I’ve been struck by a particular segment of Scripture several times, in class, at church, and on my friend’s blogs, so I figure I may as well jump on the bandwagon and post about it here.

Exodus 34:6-7

“Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed,
‘The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious,slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth;
who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.’”

Is this as simultaneously exciting and frightening to anyone else as it is to me? The things that I do- the patterns of living, the thoughts, the habits, the daily actions and lifelong pursuits- will have repercussions upon my children, my children’s children, and so forth for two more generations!

It’s awesome that this works both ways- In families like Timothy’s (like I and II Timothy), the godly example of the grandmother then led to a godly life by her daughter, and both of them led to the life of Timothy, a man pastoring a church at an age when most of us were still in school. At the same time, however, the little sins that I allow to remain in my life will have unforeseen and untold consequences in the lives of my kids, and their…well, you get the picture.

Certainly does make you think twice about things, no?

What will we know tomorrow?

Alright, here’s the deal.
I’ve realized that I rarely have time to just sit at my computer and type away a new blog post (except during class, but professors tend to frown upon that kind of activity…not to mention that it does tend to affect my ability to pay attention to the lecture), but that I do journal fairly frequently, and that those journal entries occasionally wind up being something that I wouldn’t mind sharing on here. I also just realized that I use parenthetical phrases quite a lot, because I chase rabbit trails (why rabbits, anyway? Why not wallabee trails, or platypus trails?) altogether too often. As this is unlikely to stop, however, you shall have to get used to it.

Anyhow, I was reading Acts 15, when I noticed something that I hadn’t ever really paid attention to before. Throughout this debate over whether one must be circumcised to be saved there is a deeper undercurrent of debate whether or not gentiles can be saved at all! Obviously this is no longer an issue of contention in the Church as a whole (else a lot of us would be in trouble [or not, depending on which side of the debate you took, I suppose]), but at the time this was a big deal. As I looked at the names involved in this debate, it wasn’t a random church in the middle of wherever, this was a big enough deal that Peter and Paul had to step in and clarify that gentiles didn’t have to become Jews in order to be saved. At one time, it was a matter of serious discussion among believers whether or not Gentiles could be saved at all!

This whole thing looks pretty silly from our perspective (hindsight being 20/20 and all that), which got me thinking about some other serious issues debated within the Church that now look pretty dumb now. For example, take the Arian controversy (basically that if God the Father begat the Son, the Son had a beginning and was, therefore, not fully God). Now we understand (well, maybe not “understand,” but we take it on faith because the Bible says so) that Jesus is fully man and fully God, a full member of the Trinitarian Godhead, but it was so contested in the Church during the 300s that the Council of Nicea was called to decide whether or not they thought Jesus was fully God. This makes me wonder- what sorts of things do we argue about now that will make future generations will look back at us and wonder what we were thinking? It reminds me of the movie Men in Black, when Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith have this conversation.

How many of the issues that we argue now will seem just as stupid viewed through the lens of history? Paul and Barnabas didn’t just argue, they stated the truth, then got busy WORKING toward telling the gentiles. Maybe we should quit trying to argue about abortion and simply love on hurting pregnant women. Maybe we should stop getting so worked up about how gay marriages are going to destroy the nuclear family, and start having Christian marriages that are different from secular ones, rather than having a similar (and slightly higher) divorce rate than those of the world. Maybe we should be too busy loving on the widows and orphans and lost and dying people all around us to be arguing over TULIP or premillenial dispensationalism (yes, I just used the last one because it’s fun to say).
Maybe we need to be putting a positive good out there, rather than just railing against the evil that surrounds us.

This is totally an indictment of myself as much as anyone else, but what am I doing to show the people around me Christ’s love? Am I known for my love of people, and passion to see them in relationship with God, or am I just known as a guy who can sing, or crack jokes, or whatever else I may do?

Time to change.

SDG,

Kyle

Ode to Finals-

He passed me, oh he passed me;
And oh the joy that floods my soul-
Finals are evil, but now I know
he passed me, my grades will remain whole.

-Good luck this/next week, everybody!

Stunt Pilot

And a new segment of the blog: I’ll post lovely ways to keep from being productive. They say that misery loves company, but so does procrastination!

Stunt Pilot

Enjoy!

Mr. President?

I was an odd kid. I know that this may come as a huge shock to most of you, but it is a very true statement. While other kids dreamt of being a fireman, or policeman, or soldier, or whatever it is that normal kids dream about doing as adults, I (very seriously, mind you) had decided to be the President of the United States. Throughout my elementary and secondary education, when people asked me what I wanted to do when I “grew up” I usually replied that I wanted to be the President, the POTUS, the Chief Executive of the Free World, and was even introduced once on a TV program (TV Toastmasters, a public speaking show) as a future President.
This was a long introduction to say simply that something odd and unexpected happened today- I was nominated for office in Zimrah, the student organization of the music school here at SWBTS.

It makes me wonder who nominated me…

Grains of SALT is BACK, baby!

Ah, college- my time was filled with such a myriad of activities: attempting to run my roommate for Texas Governor, writing movie reviews, naming my bathroom the U.N…those were good times. Good times.

Well, thanks to the wonders of the interwebs and the power of procrastination/boredom, no less than one of these things has begun again (No, we can’t run Shuff for Gov for several years yet…be patient, Texas!)! Tim and I have re-jump-started our movie reviewing gig, but it’s all just a bunch of pointless arguing between ourselves unless you people come read them. Sometimes they’re new movies, sometimes they’re classics, sometimes they’re just dumb movies we want to make fun of, but one thing is guaranteed: you’ll never read a movie review quite like ours!

Go to www.gosalt.wordpress.com now for the fun to commence!

Kyle

The List #1

Every person alive has things that they want to do before they die- for some people they’re more serious, for some they’re completely random, and for some they may be totally thrill-seeking, or some combination of all these and more. No matter what type of stuff might be on this list, or whether a person has ever actually come up with this list, it has some sort of a connection to that person’s view of what life is about, and what their role in life is. That said, I’m going to start a new series of short posts on things that are on “My List” (which is totally separate from this kind of list…).

Item number one on my “Bucket List” (if you will) is voicing an animated character, preferably in a Disney muscial animated feature.

What this says about me, I don’t know. Perhaps it reflects my deep need to entertain people and make them smile…or maybe I’m a ham who like to make funny voices and sing a lot. Your pick.
So, what’s on your list?

The trouble with Christians…

I’m watching the musical Company by Stephen Sondheim while prepping some potatoes for later, and just ran across a quote that spoke volumes to me:

“Married people are no more marriage than musicians are music- just because some of the people might be wrong doesn’t matter. It is still right.”

My immediate thought was of how this applies to those who condemn Christianity because of the way that some Christians act- we believers are certainly imperfect and badly flawed, but our mistakes do not invalidate the truth and reality of the Gospel, any more than the fact that some people (ME, for example) suck at piano invalidates all the beautiful pieces that have been written for that instrument.

Something to think about.

-In Defense of a Sword-

This is (for the most part) a copy from my journal, and all such future articles will be categorized as “journal.” Clever, huh?

As some of you are aware, I bought an as-yet-unnamed sword on Saturday, & through the various conversations I’ve had in the last three days, I have become aware that most people do not connect with a sword in quite the same way that I do. You see, I view life as a gigantic archetype, with each of us playing an irreplaceable role in the epic meta-story of human history. This is why we connect with epic tales like the Lord of the Rings or Braveheart- we are made to fight for something, to struggle against injustice, to defend the weak.

Second, whether we recognize it or not, we are born into a world at war. We find ourselves in the midst of a struggle between good and evil, pulled between two sides vying for our very souls, and those of everyone around us. Ephesians 6 makes clear to us that believers cannot be “conscientious objectors”- we must war! We are given weapons and armor to equip us for this battle unseen, but only one item we are given is an offensive weapon- the Word of God. The sword is the symbol God uses several times to represent Scripture, including Hebrews 4:12 (“The Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword”) and Ephesians 6:17 (“Take up the…sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God”). When Jesus was tempted by Satan, He didn’t respond on the fly with impromptu witticisms, but quoted back Scripture to Satan, using the eternal Words of God as both defense and offense in that battle.

All of that to say this- the sword is to me a reminder of the daily battle I am to fight. It serves as a symbol of what my relationship should be with Scripture: just as a sword must become an extension of a warrior’s arm, the Word of God must be a part of me. It is not enough to read it and move on, I must digest it, practice with it until it shapes and refines who I am. When I look at the sword now hanging so beautifully on my wall, I don’t think of medieval history, but rather of the epic battle we each fight. It is not escapism from the mundane-ness of life, but rather an invitation into the TRUE reality, to see past the “matrix” and join the supernatural fight that is around us every moment of our lives. It is a reminder that though we live in the now, The Word was, and He IS, and He Will BE; Logos wins!

That’s really all I have to say about that for now.

Altars vs Idols

Genesis 35:1-4

¹God said to Jacob, “Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.” ²So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments. ³Then let us arise and go up to Bethel, so that I may make there an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone.” ⁴So they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods that they had, and the rings that were in their ears. Jacob hid them under the terebinth tree that was near Shechem.

———–

God asks for altars, not idols. Idols are man’s way of trying to capture who God is and box Him into a form that man can understand. Idols are man’s way of trying to control God- of trying to show God off to others as OUR god, rather than being HIS people. Altars, on the other hand, stay put. We can’t keep them and show them off. They cost us something; our time, our effort, and our stuff, and they remain in place forever as a testament to God’s holiness, God’s faithfulness, and God’s Lordship, not our own pitiful attempts at control.