Anyways, I personally didn't notice anything wrong. It was delightful to not notice Scripture being taken out of context: Col. 3:12 and following. The message was about why we must forgive. Anyways, all for now.
Monday, April 12, '04
It's kind of cool that we sang a song written by David Gentiles, but I was awfully annoyed by the lines of the song. One line said something like "I have to find the words to give You the honor and the glory You deserve." That's not true. ONE, we can't find the words. TWO, fitting words have already been given to us by special revelation. See Psalms, Revelation, etc. THREE, no words of praise uttered by humans are needed at all by God.
Another line went like this: "I want to touch Your every Thought so I can be changed." I'm sorry, but this is just ridiculous. We can't touch God's every thought. Talk to this guy and this dude and some of these dead guys. For goodness' sake, check out Isaiah 55:8-9. "The finite can neither grasp nor contain the infinite." Couldn't we sing something a little bit more like "I want to touch your thoughts so I can be changed?" or "I want to dwell on your Word so I can be changed?"
Monday, April 5, '04. Dr. Sam Gore, a sculptor, made a clay figure of Jesus in chapel today. I liked it.
Wed., March 24, '04.
GOOD: He said, "God doesn't need you, but he wants you, and you need him." I agree. He's from Trinity Baptist Church. If anyone knows whether that's SBTC or BGCT email dbusnipe@yahoo.com.
BAD: nothing comes to mind.
QUALIFIED: Sometimes we need students who are heroes to point out how the chapel speakers are neros. But not today.
MONDAY MARCH TWENTY-TWO. A "special chapel" for the "Turn the Tide" Swaziland trip. Seth Barnes from Adventures in Missions (http://www.adventures.org/) spoke.
Good: The Head Snipe generally agrees with this guy.
Bad: This could almost be in the "qualified" section, since I and the guy who thinks almost the same way I do agreed that he meant well. Barnes said something like this: "They don't need someone to tell them facts about AIDS again. They need love and friendship." We assume he means that they need love and friendship MORE than they need facts about AIDS, in which case we tend to agree. However, this is a very destructive attitude if abused. I think he did abuse it by not offering any qualification or distinction. He should have said, "Well, they need facts about AIDS, too, those are great, but they need love, too, and they need that more." Here are two reasons why it's very dangerous for him to say what he said without qualification.
1. Facts about AIDS is the only thing that can save Africa. This is what worked in Uganda, the only success story in the history of AIDS. Facts presented in Uganda included that fact that monagomy is the only safe sex, condoms being only a little bit "safer." One instance of this was a massive true love waits campaign in Uganda in 1995, which was coordinated by some of our own Baptist missionaries (International Mission Board, see imb.org) and had the support of president Museveni's wife. For more on Uganda and AIDS, click here. Note the logical approach that includes liberal UN condom promotion as well as faith-based abstinence promotion. ((((Note that this worked in Uganda, the only success ever. Note that George W. Bush promotes an AIDS initiative that emphasizes faith-based programs and abstinence as the only truly safe sex, condoms being only a little safer. Note that Bush says that Ugandan strategies should be utilized. Note that Bush is right. Note that a vote for a liberal like Kerry is a vote to not do this and, in effect, allow about 50 million more Africans to die.))))
2. Was he talking about people that already have AIDS? Most of the people DBU students will be talking to this summer don't have AIDS, not yet. They'd better hear some facts about AIDS from DBU students and the Wilkinson team, or the trip will be meaningless in the long, and medium, run. If they don't get the shishkabob scared out of them by facts about AIDS and certain death, they're likely to have this great touchy-feely, tearful, emotional relationship with some American young person, and maybe a genuine friendship, maybe a friendship that lasts...
...and then die of AIDS in a few years. Ok, now it's also true that with or without facts about AIDS people should obey God and abstain from extra-marital sex. But it's not easy for a human being to change another human being's heart, no not even for a DBU student to change an African's heart. In fact, it's impossible. What is possible, though extremely difficult, is to communicate to a peson that what they are doing can kill them.
Qualified: The passage in I Cor. (probably chapter 9) about "I become weak for the weak so that by all means I might save some" refers in context to the weak and the strong faith, not the weak and the strong body or financial status or whatever. It's basically about Jewish and Gentile believers if I remember correctly. Check the Bible yourself; you can read; if you're not, I'm going to call you names now because you have no idea what I'm saying. YOU BIG WUSS! Ok, anyways, when Seth Barnes said we should do this to relate to and minister to folks dying of AIDS in southern Africa, that's quite right; I agree, anyways. But it's APPLICATION of the text, not INTERPRETATION. I think it's always a mistake to go straight to the application of a Scripture without telling your listeners what the interpretation is. Basic hermeneutical principle, but I'm not sure if Dr. Bell mentions it on this site. Seth Barnes, then, was a little bit careless. That's a far cry from being aberrant, which is of course a far cry from heretical.
WEDNESDAY'S CHAPEL: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE FUZZY (March 8).
Lance Shumake. I think he's the leader of igoglobal.org. A DBU graduate.
GOOD: It's always good to have someone advertise student missions.
BAD: Some people were complaining that he advertised student missions to the exclusion of doing God's work in hospitals, politics, academia, and plumbing, etc., etc.
FUZZY: I don't remember. I wasn't particularly impressed or bothered by anything.
Monday the eighth:
GOOD: Michael Lindsay, I thought, came across as simultaneously humble and confident. I was told this was going to be a "lecture" rather than a "message," so I didn't mind not hearing any Scriptures. He talked about what I would say meets the definition of a national revival: people taking their faith seriously in business, politics, etc. I say "revival" not "good idea" because it's actually happening. I'll take his word for it: what great news!
If he had any challenge for us, it was the same this guy says in big words like "dualism" and "compartmentalization." The challege is that worship is a lifestyle, and your Christian faith should affect your entire life.
BAD: The sniper rifle is still trained on last Wednesday's speaker. See here.
THE QUALIFIED: Nothing much.
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SELF-ESTEEM GOSPEL EXCEPTION
Paul Perry, a recent DBU graduate, spoke not too long ago. He told us not to be egocentric. For a rare, exception, a chapel speaker advised us not to sin.
(Previously the Snipe had said: "Chapel messages this semester have generally been in alignment with what the Snipe calls the "self-esteem gospel," which emphasizes how Jesus' having died for us, and God's love for us, should be the foundation of our life confidence. The Snipe agrees with this doctrine. However, chapel speakers have generally thus far ignored the doctrine of sin.", but this is no longer entirely true).
A few other guys have said to not think negatively and stuff; mostly they were talking about thinking negatively about other people, so it was a bit more sophisticated than the self-esteem gospel.
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Monday's chapel. Family emphasis week or something. I wasn't paying much attention. Seemed like it was ok to the half of my brain that was there. I heard some mildly positive and mildly negative feedback from blokes who were paying attention.
Wednesday's chapel. Bad news, homies. Two things. First of all, he said something along the lines of "I wonder if Jesus ever sat down at the end of a day and said to himself, 'What am I doing wrong? These disciples just don't get it?'"
Long, long ago in a land far away, someone told me that John Eldgredge was an open theist because, for instance, he said things like "God took a risk," the word risk not being separable from a certain level of uncertainty. However, the main thesis of Eldredge's book Wild at Heart indicates that he only spoke carelessly, as the thesis of the book deals so closely with God and men being daring.
Our chapel speaker, on the other hand, had no such central thesis to explain himself. How dare he suggest that Jesus didn't know exactly what He was doing, and that what He was doing was just fine?
Secondly, he suggested that when Jesus said to Peter "Get behind me, Satan," that Peter had been thinking that if Jesus was going to die then his disciples would also have to suffer. This claim is reasonable at first glance: later verses in the synoptic Gospels (that's Matthew, Mark, and Luke) have Jesus saying to the disciples that if they want to follow Him, they will have to suffer.
However, his suggestion is almost guaranteed to be completely incorrect. Here is the reason: if you read the Gospels enough, you can tell that the gist of this stuff is that the disciples just didn't get it until after the Resurrection; they had no clue what Jesus was doing.
If I'm right, our Wednesday chapel speaker (whose name escapes me) stands condemned of a gross misinterpretation of Scripture, but that's no reason to suppose that he's not orthodox.
CURRENT COUNT:
2 BGCT speakers
3 SBTC speakers
1 BWA speaker
?6? DBU professors (one of them spoke twice).
1 seminary president (how do you classify Paige Patterson? We put him in 2 categories).
1 sister college president (Criswell college; Jerry Johnson; he's in two categories.)
1 SBC speaker (Paige Patterson's other category).
1 guy from Baylor healthcare system (also a deacon at a BGCT church)
1 DBU graduate
1 DBU student (black heritage chapel)
5 unbeknownsts
1 guy named Michael Lindsay
1 guy from Adventures in Missions
1 sculptor