Michael Kelley's Blog, page 248

Religious People Are Dangerous Nerds

This is funny. It's also cutting. But it's also helpful.

The overriding message of this video is, I think, that being spiritual is fine. But don't overdo it.

Drill that down though, because the message behind that sentiment is a powerful one about the nature of what religion is.

It's a hobby. Or a past time. Or a part of your week. But it's not real life. At some point, you've got to live in the real world – pay real bills, work at your real job, be in real relationships. And religion is fine, so long as it's kept in its place.

You see, though, that the underpinning of that argument has to do with what is "real" and what is ancillary to the "real."

But what if religion is the realest real there is?

What is True Greatness?

Well said, Jared Wilson:

What is the message of the gospel?

That the greatest good (God) offers the greatest action (love) to the greatest need (wrath-owed sinners) by sending the greatest treasure (Jesus) in the greatest invitation (to everyone) into the greatest life (everlasting).

How is this not exciting?

What is Satan REALLY Saying in Genesis 3?

"Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the LORD God had made" (Genesis 3:1).

Really? When you look at what serpent, or Satan, said to Eve, it doesn't seem THAT cunning. In seems in fact pretty straight forward. But read between the lines with me. Satan is saying something else – something more – than what he's actually saying.

Satan led his attack with a simple question: "Did God really say you can't eat from any tree in the garden?" It's a twisting of God's word, to be sure, but there's also something else here. He is causing Eve to focus on the one prohibition God gave to His children. He's moving her to a fixation on the negative – to what she can't have – rather than focusing on the hundreds or thousands of trees she could. The underlying message behind this simple question is this:

God is a miser. He is not generous toward you.

But let's not stop there. If we continue to trace that thought down to the center, we see what Satan was really getting at:

God doesn't really love you. If He did, He wouldn't be holding out on you. But He is. He doesn't want you to be happy, and the way you know it is there's something else out there that He won't let you have.

Now we see the cunning. The craftiness. But let's  not stop there, because his cunning is evident in other subtle ways. Think, for example, of what the implications are of Satan going to Eve instead of Adam. God created the world, and humanity, within certain guidelines and systems. In His design, it was the male who was to lead the home. But Satan didn't go to the male; he went straight to the female.

In this, too, we see the subversive attacks of the enemy. He is challenging the authority, wisdom, and plan of God simply by asking the question to Eve at all.

Then there's the word choice of the snake. If you look back to chapter 2 of Genesis, it's interesting to note that in this chapter, which talks much of the creation of man and his purpose in creation, the name of God reads like this:

LORD God.

That is, the revealed name of God signifying his dominance, mastery, and power with the name for God as creator. And yet here slithers the snake and says, "Did God really say…"

No LORD. Subtly, subversively, the snake strips the authority out of God's name and causes Eve to hold God at an arm's length. A creator who has no real claim on her or her husband.

Cunning indeed. This is the true genius of Satan, for with each one of these seemingly small choices of words or phrases, he steadily chips away not at the will of the human, but of her belief. That's the real key, isn't it? Satan recognizes that actions spring from beliefs. Always. So if you want to direct action, you must begin with belief.

Maybe God doesn't know what He's talking about.

Maybe He doesn't have authority over me.

Maybe He is holding out on me.

Maybe He doesn't really love me at all.

And the dominoes of a belief system begin to topple. It's only a matter of time when belief begins to falter that actions follow.

Fridays Are For One Question

The blogosphere has gone wild over the past day with obituaries for Steve Jobs. Some extolling his virtues as a creative genius, some regarding his religious beliefs, some noting that he was an adopted child who potentially could have been aborted.

Many have included quotes from Jobs at a commencement address he gave at Stanford which reflected primarily on death and how one lives in light of death. One quote struck me as particularly insightful:

"Death . . . is Life's change agent."

The quote means that when you really grab hold of the fact that death bats a thousand – it's not an issue of if but an issue of when, it actually frees you to start living. In gospel terms, death is not to be feared, but it is to be acknowledged so that we might work for the glory of God and the extension of the kingdom while on earth.

So while on Fridays we sometimes ask about favorite breakfast cereals and the greatest cartoons, let's take a more serious look today:

"How would living with the knowledge of death practically change the way you live?"

Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

Last night I flipped open my Macbook and checked the news to find out about the death of Steve Jobs. This morning I listened to my iPod on the way to work. I'm typing this on my desktop Mac, one of hundreds inside this building. In a few minutes I'll speak to my wife on her iPhone.

The impact of Steve Jobs on our daily life really can't be overstated. He will be remembered as one of the great pioneers and influencers of this century, if not in history.

But here are a few choice things he said in reflecting on his own death:

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it."

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life."

"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose."

"Death . . . is Life's change agent."

Justin Taylor put it well like this:

"Much will be said tonight and in the days ahead about this entrepreneurial genius. From a spiritual perspective, this much can be said with certainty: Steve Jobs, created in the image of God, was a remarkable example of God's common grace in his aesthetics and creativity and productivity.

And we can all hope that in his final days, this recipient of so much common grace found rest in God's sovereign saving grace."

The Astounding Body of Work of John Williams

Even if you don't know who John Williams is, you know who John Williams is. If you've been to the movies in the last 40 years, you have heard a John Williams' score. In fact, he's responsible for some of the most recognizable and lasting movie scores in history.

I came across this list which is an effort to rank Williams' top 10 movie scores. Here's what they came up with:

10. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

9. Star Wars Episide 1

8. Superman

7. Jurassic Park

6. Raiders of the Lost Ark

5. Schindler's List

4. Catch Me If You Can

3. Hook

2. Jaws

1. Star Wars Episode 4

Look back over that list again. It's unbelievable that all of this music sprang from the genius of one man. But if you keep reading about John Williams, you find some even more astounding things. Here's a few of the facts:

- He has been nominated for an Oscar 41 times (won 5 of them)

- He was first nominated for an Oscar in 1967. Between then and 2005, there were only 9 years in which he wasn't nominated for an Academy Award.

- He's been nominated for more than one Oscar in a single year 13 times.

There are all kinds of things we might say in looking this body of work. We might, for example, note the value of working well with others on a consistent basis. John Williams seems to be Steven Spielberg's go-to composer for his movies, and Spielberg ain't too bad at his craft either.

Or we might comment on the value of developing what's inside you. John Williams didn't write the score for Jaws when he was 15. It took a while, with consistent effort and hard work, to bring forth what was there all along.

But I think what is so impressive to me is the staying power of this man. He's in his eighties now, still composing, still doing what he loves. Despite many opportunities, I'm sure, to retire and do something different, he's kept plugging along. And take a look at what can be accomplished over the course of a life that's spent doing the same thing.

Perseverance is the word for today for me. Perseverance.

Bloodlines

John Piper was a racist.

This powerful documentary recounts his story, and gives the reasoning behind his passion for his new book called Bloodlines.

Bloodlines Documentary with John Piper from Crossway on Vimeo.

(HT: Z)

Jesus, Pharisees, Mozart, and That Other Guy

Oh, how the Pharisees hated Jesus. They despised His teaching. They abhorred His choice of company. They detested His methods. They accused Him of blasphemy, demonic possession, and even treason. All of this animosity toward one man – it seems a bit much to me.

After all, they were all Hebrews, and one would think living in an occupied land controlled by another nation would serve to unite countrymen during such a time. They could hate the Romans together. It's in peace time, when everything is prosperous, when we have the luxury of hating our fellows.

So what could motivate the kind of violent hatred?

Perhaps it was religious fervor – the Pharisees saw Jesus as an affront to the holiness and sanctity of God.

Maybe it was Jesus' own attitude – He certainly didn't try to impress or coddle them. That whole "brood of vipers" thing probably didn't make alot of friends.

But maybe there was something else, too. Perhaps it was the fact that in Jesus, the Pharisees saw everything they wished for themselves and yet knew they could never be. It makes sense – We often hate those who embody what we most wish we ourselves could be.

It makes me think very much of the movie Amadeus, a fictional portrayal of the relationship between Mozart and that other guy that nobody remembers, Salieri.

Salieri saw in Mozart everything he wanted to be himself. And he saw in Mozart everything he could not be.

These Pharisees, with all their attempts to live perfectly according to the law and fullfill its demands, saw in Jesus one who was actually doing it. And not just doing it, but feeling it. The obedience of Jesus was real, not fabricated. It was emotional, not stale. It was full of love, not obligation. And try as they might, they knew they could never live, or love, like Him.

Oh, how they hated Him.

But oh, how He loved them. He loved the Pharisees, and all of the tough talk was spoken with an urgency for them to simply own up to the fact that they could not live like Jesus. And because they couldn't, they needed what only He could provide: a new heart. A born again heart. Jesus was ready to give them that.

Thank God, He still is.

Is Your Anger Righteous? Really?

We like to think so. We like to think we have the same motivation as Jesus who flipped over tables and cursed fig trees. But more times than not, we are angry not for righteous reasons, but because we had a certain plan about how a situation should unfold, and someone or something messed with that plan.

We are angry because we have been dethroned in a given situation.

I wonder if it might be profitable to, when anger creeps up from our hearts, to take a moment of reflection. To trace that anger back down to its source. To not just be angry, but to ask ourselves, "Why is this firing me up so much?" I wonder what we might find if we did that?

My hunch is, more times than not, we'd find ourselves crying over the shredded paper crown we had constructed for ourselves.

Fridays Are For One Question

Yesterday afternoon, Jana laid out two beautiful pork tenderloins. She had the kids at swim team practice, and my instructions were clear:

Grill the tenderloins.

Simple, right?

That's what I thought. But two rock hard, charred beyond belief pieces of meat later, we were eating tacos at Moe's.

So I'll be honest – I'm looking for a little encouragement here. Today's question is about mishaps around food:

"What is your worst cooking experience?"