Jun 30th, 2009 by John
John W Frye
Ordained to Word and Sacrament in the Evangelical Covenant Church at its 124th Annual Meeting in Portland, OR. I attended not only as an ordinand but as a delegate for Fellowship Evangelical Covenant Church, Hudsonville, MI where I serve as pastor.
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Jun 23rd, 2009 by John
“Ay,” he said aloud. There is no translation for this word and perhaps it is a noise such as a man might make, involuntarily, feeling the nail go through his hands and into the wood.”
I still am not convinced that Ernest Hemngway meant no intended allusions to Jesus Christ in the character of “the old man,” Santiago, in The Old Man and the Sea. What are we to make of the quote above? Just two pages before this sentence (in my edition), Hemingway has Santiago ruminating about sin. Besides I think it is a sin [not to hope]. Do not think about sin, he thought. There is enough problems without sin.
Again, imagine the cross-shaped mast and sail as you read: He unstepped the mast and furled the sail and tied it. The he shouldered the mast and started to climb. It was then he knew the depth of his tiredness. He stopped and looked back and saw the reflection from the street light the great tail of the fish standing well up behind the skiff’s stern…. He started to climb again and at the top he fell and lay for some time with the mast across his shoulder. How can this not be an intended allusion to Jesus falling beneath his cross on the Via Delorosa?
At some point I am going to catalogue every overtly Christian/Catholic reference in the story. The number of them is overwhelming. Here are a few more: Santiago is out too far in the Gulf for three days and three nights. Santiago is happy to think that San Pedro [Saint Peter] was a fisherman as was the father of the great [Joe] DiMaggio. Not too mention Santiago’s promise to God of many “Hail Marys and Our Fathers.”
Just like Calvinists and Armininians, classical determinists and open theists, complementarians and egalitarians, KJV-only and TNIVers, so there are those who believe Hemingway intended no comparison between Santiago and Jesus Christ and others, like myself, who hold to Hemingway’s very intended allusions to Jesus Christ (even though Hemingway declared that he had no symbolism in mind).
What do you think?
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Jun 19th, 2009 by John
We come to the third and final post on Scot McKnight’s book titled Fasting. We will comment on Part 2- “Wisdom and Fasting.”
First, I want to emphasize again that while I had read a lot of books on fasting and thought it would be hard to read anything new, Scot offered a fresh, creative and compelling “take” on fasting that I could never have imagined. Second, because I know Scot and have had leisurely conversations with him, I hear both a skilled teacher’s and a passionate pastor’s heart in Scot’s writing.
Part 2 of his book is only 3 chapters compared to Part 1’s nine chapters. Yet, for Part 2’s brevity, it carries a load of helpful spiritual direction. Chapter 11 concerns the spiritual dangers attendant to fasting and to fasters. The dangers took sharp focus in Isaiah’s writings and have plagued God’s people ever since.
Chapter 12 surprisingly discusses the benefits of fasting, but with this expected McKnight caveat: “I do believe that there are tangible, real, beneficial results from fasting, but I also believe that fasting is not an instrument to get what we want” (155). Scot points away from instrumental fasting to this: “Communication with God is, in my opinion, the intent of fasting” (149). If communication with God is fasting’s intent, then fasting for its benefits makes God an instrument that exists for us. Scot will have none of that. And, again, Scot has plenty of quotes from church history to complement his observations.
Let’s be reminded of Scot’s definition: Fasting is the natural, inevitable response of a person to a grievous sacred moment in life (166). A–> Sacred Moment, B–> Fasting, C–>Results. Scot emphasizes the need to focus on A to B, not B to C with results seen as benefits. He even comments that there may be no results whatsoever from fasting.
Scot wisely ends the book with some medical advice which he received from MD’s. Fasting can be dangerous to the health of the body. The Bible no where speaks to the bodily benefits of fasting or of fasting as a diet. Be warned of those marketing a spiritual discipline for its benefits. This far afield from the Sacred Text.
I come away from Scot’s book with this challenge: Be more attentive to life, to its sorrows and pains. Be more attentive to God and how God feels about human pain and affliction. Be more attentive to my own soul and my need for growth in grace. Let the sacred grief be felt and let it move me to fast in order to be in communion with God. Benefits may come; they may not. God is the center of fasting, not me and my “benefits.”
Scot, thanks for a very informative, transformative book.
John
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Jun 18th, 2009 by John
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Jun 15th, 2009 by John
Scot's Book
We begin a series of posts on Scot McKnight’s book titled Fasting (Thomas Nelson: 2009) with Foreword by Phyllis Tickle in “The Ancient Practices Series.”
Frankly, I was a little skeptical about another book on fasting. As part of the renewal of the church (spearheaded by the so-called ‘third wave’ in the 1980s), I had read a lot of books on fasting. As part of my D. Min. studies at Fuller Theological Seminary in the history and practice of the spiritual disciplines, I read a lot about fasting. What could Scot McKnight offer?
I was stunned from the beginning. Why? Dr. McKnight in clear, gentle observations simply informed me that almost all the books I had read on fasting were misguided from the start. He doesn’t say they were wrong or unprofitable or dangerous; simply misguided. How so?
Most books on fasting concern results. If I do the “Daniel fast” or a juice fast or an absolute fast, most writers will inform me of what I’ll get out of those fasts: closer communion with God, sharper insight into my own soul, discernment in life, etc. All this is well and good until you search the Scriptures. Scot McKnight searched the Scriptures. Here’s what he learned: the biblical data do not focus on, emphasize, or catalogue fasting’s results. The laser-light focus of the Scriptures is on the cause for fasting. To paraphrase Scot: Fasting is the natural human response to sacred, momentous grief or weighty reality. With his skillful teacher’s way (e.g., his A-B-C summary), Scot has a way of messing up traditional categories.
Fasting is natural?! Almost all reading I’ve done has made fasting out to be an imposition on human nature. I never contemplated that fasting is a “natural” human response.
Grief? I want to fast for fun, for insight, for intensified spiritual power, for that feel-good-feeling that I am really, really practicing a spiritual discipline. Grief?? What’s up with that? So, Scot leads me through the Scriptures helping me reframe most of what the “experts” have written on fasting.
By the way: Scot defines fasting as not ingesting food and water. It’s not about abstaining from media (TV, computer, movies, iPods, reading novels, etc). Phooey! Another trendy definition of fasting bites the dust. Thanks, Scot.
As many other biblical thinkers point out, Scot makes us aware of a controlling dualism in Western spirituality. An old heresy called gnosticism still lurks in our finest ‘Christian’ spiritualities. It’s a heresy that splits what God has united. The heart of the error is this: the body (matter) is bad/evil and the spirit/soul is good. With this latent error Western evangelicalism has been afraid of the body because it will lead us to sin or to all manner of bodily misconduct. (A view still controlling a lot of youth ministry.) Western Christians don’t have a valid role for the human body in spirituality. Is your body a monster to be tamed, a celebrity to be pampered, a cornucopia to be filled, or a wallflower to be ignored? We imagine that we have this carnal lump of clay hampering our purer, higher spirit’s desires. How different is the Bible’s description of the body’s role in response to God and to the vicissitudes of life.
From Scot’s opening chapters, I come away with this: traditional views of fasting with their focus on results make us turn inward. Toward ourselves. What can I get, can we get out of the discipline of fasting? Scot suggests that question gets us off on the wrong foot. We need to be attentive to life, to God, to weighty seasons of grief. We need to be asking “How does God feel about this sacred moment of grief or trauma or serious experience?” How can we join with God? Fasting is not about us. It is about God.
What do you think? Are you fixed on fasting’s results?
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Jun 3rd, 2009 by John
THE TOMMY NIELSEN AMERICAN CONFEDERATES BIBLE
Written by scholars and historians of the deep south who are saving their confederate money in the hopes that “the South shall rise again!” You will get chills as the glory days of slavery are relived. The “Articles of the Confederate States” are included and explained. Breath-taking, eye-witness accounts of the “Battle of Fort Sumter” with testimonies that will move your heart. Marvel at the birth, growth and deep Christian convictions of the Ku Klux Klan. Also, an added feature: little known diary pages of Jefferson Davis are included in THE AMERICAN CONFEDERATES BIBLE.
Are you tired of Yankee dominated Bibles? Your time has come. Get your own copy of THE AMERICAN CONFEDERATES BIBLE. No true, rebel-yell Southern Christian should be without one!
“The South Shall Rise Again!”
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