I really think that is a vestigial feature from an earlier time. It isn’t an attractive feature but it is variable both by denomination and by individual. There is hope it will be de emphasized going forward.
This passage came to mind and I thought it was also fitting in the context of your comment here.
“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple…”
Sin is not a lie. I believe you even agreed with this recently. The question is how holy is the God you do not know.
Folks sure use motivated reasoning when they elevate their opinions and deny skeptical theism ←(new and improved more prestigious link ; - ).
Just catching up. Sorry for the length. I’ll preface my replies by expressing my condolences to @Kendel and the MSU community.
The Father mocked him? Really? No, the crowd, religious leaders and elders mocked Jesus, and the taunts that they hurled at him were couched in the same language as Satan’s temptations in the wilderness.
“If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread.”
“If you are the Son of God, hurl yourself down from this height.”
You sound like an existentialist. Kierkegaard said, Purity of heart is to will one thing.
Right. See Wittgenstein. Most of our philosophical confusions can be traced to the limits of our language.
Yeah. Wittgenstein again. See his discussion of “imponderable evidence.”
Yeah. Withhold judgment until the fruits (if any) are seen.
I have a good friend who left the faith for that reason.
Try harder, my friend. This is rude.
Also rude.
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The other day @MarkD shared a different video with Iain McGilchrist over here. I finally got to finish watching this evening and
found his thoughts about purpose around 00:30:00 interesting enough to transcribe them.
According to McGilchrist
There are two kinds of purpose. There’s the kind that the left hemisphere understands, which is the purposing of a tool or a machine to fulfill your will. Once it has fulfilled your will, it’s job is done.
There’s another kind of purpose which belongs to all the things that we like and love. It belongs to games; it belongs to our relationships, to our experience of spirality and of art. They’re not purpose-less. From the point of view of the left hemisphere, you might as well not bother with them, because they have no purpose. However, they are supremely purposeful, because they contain within them something which calls to us and makes us move toward them and beyond. This is not in some designed way by an engineering god. That is a terrible idea that the left hemisphere has dreamt up. It deifies itself as the organizer and mechanic of everything. It says, “God is like that.” But what I understand by god is nothing like that. When I talk about purpose and talk about these values as being values in themselves, ends in themselves. I’m suggesting that we need to re-imagine what we mean by those values and by that purpose.
I like how he points out two different concepts of purpose, one extrinsic and one intrinsic. And I think those two different views show themselves in this discussion in various ways, particularly the first concept: that of a tool.
I think underneath many views of meaninglessness is the assumption that the meaning of our lives results from our being made or coming into being in order to fulfill a role, complete a job, carry out some assignment. The assumption is that without a specific reason for our existence, beyond existence itself, existence is meaningless, absurd (out of tune).
If I understand this idea correctly, does it mean, then, that our lives are meaningful only if they function as a tool to fulfill someone else’s purpose? If that is the case, is that what one would want to be the source of the meaning of one’s life? Certainly it might depend a great deal on who we imagine that someone is. But still…is that desirable? I don’t think this idea works even for Christians.
I think this segment from the long quote above is valuable:
When I talk about purpose and talk about these values as being values in themselves, ends in themselves.
It seems like it’s asking too much to see meaning in our lives in this way, accepting subjectivity as part of the package, being less invested in “ultimates.” In focusing so heavily on ultimates (and our inability to participate in or change them), we tend to miss the real value of our own lives and those of others. In missing it, we are poorer. Starving at a feast.
I’ll bring Sisyphus back, the poster-boy of nihilism. Aside from his mythical existence, he can’t fit the bill of the nihilist. Sisyphus’s meaningless existence was created for him with a purpose – punishment. Sisyphus’s existence is a paradox, particularly, if one sees meaning in life tied to an assigned purpose. I don’t think we need it.
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Dan Allender and Tremper Longman arrived at that conclusion in their book The Cry of the Soul:
“God chose to violate His Son in our place. The Son stared into the mocking eyes of God; He heard the laughter of the Father’s derision and felt Him depart in disgust. In effect, the horror of judgment that God brought upon Nineveh, as prophesied in Nahum 3, was leveled against Jesus.”
Not at all. @Klax freely admits this. Which makes his certainty regarding the judgement of God contemptible.
Don’t forget our friend Narcissus:
“Narcissus finds himself thirsty one day and makes his way to a clear pool for a drink. In the water he sees his reflection, an image so striking that he reaches in to embrace it. But the image is lost when the water is disrupted, as it is with each future effort, leaving Narcissus all the more desperate. Immobilized before the pool, he pines for the image that will never return his love and eventually succumbs to the neglect of his basic needs.”
Chuck DeGroat When Narcissism Comes to Church
To whom? Liam couldn’t lie to save his life. No one here is lying. No one who can be said to have originated the ignorant superstitious idea (the Egyptians wasn’t it?) was lying.
But of course most here believe this that is not true. And its not just Muslims and Protestants, although their exclusivity is acute, Orthodox and other Catholic are damnationist too. Virtually nobody believes that Love is competent. Virtually every Abrahamic believes that ‘choice’ made by teenagers affects their eternal destiny. Believes the lie that Love is incompetent.
Just read the blog post, Mike. Keener conveniently leaves out things like the Burned Over District and other revivals that turned out not to be revivals.
In my short life, I’ve seen Christians grab on to all kinds of things as “of the Lord” and run with them. Then to find out that the end result was worse than before.
We can only get a sense for what has been happening at Asbury or any other “event”, great or small, in distant hindsight. And that will be colored as well by many things.
We also fail to notice what looks mundane but which has been transformative. Shiny objects tend to pull at us. So sometimes we miss the most important things.
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If he did that may not have been the point or context of what he was saying. Which blog post? Knowing him the way I do, he does not conveniently leave out things.
Ok, I think you meant this article, while Keener doesn’t go into specifics, he is not naive about it:
“He also noted that, while some manifestations were human responses to the work of God’s Spirit, some were imitations or worse.”
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What are the most important things? Do you believe genuine revival or works of the Spirit happen?
- Keener’s a professor at Asbury? Ha! Good to know.
- Interesting article, even Sam Storms’ bio; Good Lord! about the only thing Sam didn’t say about himself is whether he drinks his coffee black or with milk and sugar!
- I have half a mind to email Keener privately and suggest the Asbury crowd go “full on”: unscrew the pews from the floors and encourage circular seating on folding chairs or the floor, and allow–within reason–public testimony, teaching, and singing, followed immediately by private prayer and time for reflecting on whatever has been shared by whoever is “moved” to share it. Nothing, IMO, is more conducive to the Spirit’s flowing, than a circular or oval seating arrangement. Stages are for lectures and performances.
- Will the Asbury Revival last or grow? Who knows?
- “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.”
- Just stifle Catholic and “End-times” prophets who want to stir the crowd up with a claim that the Virgin is holding back the Hand of God or that Heavenly War will break out tomorrow. That’s unnecessary and uncallled for fear-mongering.
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N.T. Wright’s comments at Asbury were a topic of discussion here not too long ago 
- In this thread? or elsewhere?
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I wonder if Keener is considered a friend of BioLogos. He is open to theistic evolution and co-wrote the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible with John Walton.
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- Maybe “Asbury Revival”-related posts merit their own thread.
- N.T. Wright spoke at Asbury? Ha! Better a heathen or atheist than a YEC-cer, eh?
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