Playtime and Real Life

It seems the line between playtime and real life is fading these days. I see this everywhere, but here I want to focus on Bible College.

Here’s what I mean by playtime and real life:

In playtime, you decide when things will begin, and when they’ll end. Also, what you do in playtime has no impact on the outside world around you. For example, think of a paintball game. In a paintball game you’re playing war. You and your friends decide you will “fight” from 9am till 2pm, with a break for lunch in between. Even though you are shooting at each other, no one is going to die or be seriously injured. Your play war will have no impact on the outside world; no one cares what you are doing in your little arena. No one outside or inside your game is going to change their lives on account of it.

Real war, however, is different. No one knows when a real war begins or when it will end. Everyone’s lives, inside the war and around it, will be affected. There are great responsibilities in war, for the foot soldier and the general. Death is real.

In some Bible Colleges there is a thing called “practical ministry” — where the students are supposed to get “real world” experience. But that is not what they get…

In “practical ministry,” playtime is confused with real life. No one is living real life in school. Practical ministry should really be called “playtime ministry.” Playtime is sometimes good as a way to learn about real life, but only as long as everyone understands the difference between the two and does not get them confused.

Practical equals reality. We need schools like this…

This confusion of playtime and real life carry on after the student has finished school, which is when the student faces the harsh reality and finds it is not what they expected.

Rather than having “practical experience” I think it would better to have an apprenticeship program. Students remain in the classroom full days for the first two years, learning all the theory they need. Then, if they pass that stage, they are assigned to a real ministry and apprentice there for an additional two (or more) years. There they will be trained in a real world situation, complete with all the responsibilities that come with it. Once their apprenticeship is complete, they will be ready to go out on their own.

The New Covenant Babel

What did Dostoevsky mean by this quote…

“…socialism is not merely the labor question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism today, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to Heaven from earth but to set up Heaven on earth.”*

In the Old Covenant (Old Testament) time, God’s salvation system was through the temple and Jerusalem. A temple is a stairway and a gateway to Heaven. The city around the temple is the cultural bed in which the temple rests. Babel, then, was a counterfeit Jerusalem and temple — an Old Covenant counterfeit.

In the New Covenant we see, not us going up to Heaven, but rather, Heaven coming down to the earth (Revelation 21). What then would a New Covenant counterfeit look like?

Dostoevsky recognized socialism as this counterfeit.

* Dostoevsky, Fydor, The Brothers Karamazov (Barnes & Noble: New York, 2004 [1879-1880]), pg. 32.

Sufficient Evidence: Empirically Impossible

Recently I posted this quote on my Facebook page:

A socialist atheist got upset by the quote and felt the need to reply, which went something like this:

Socialism is not atheistic! There is no god and we just want to create a society where all are taken care of. If there is a god then provide sufficient evidence. Until then stop wasting my time!

Forgetting the fact that his response confirmed the truth of the quote, and forgetting the fact that he was the one wasting my time by responding and demanding an explanation, I thought, “What would be sufficient evidence?”

Because, of course, empirically speaking, there is no sufficient evidence to prove God. Even if Jesus were to appear in the sky above this guy’s house and cry out with a loud voice, “I am Jesus! I am God! I created the universe!” my Facebook friend would still be left with the choice of wether to believe what he saw was real or not. And if he’s predisposed not to believe then he will probably explain away the experience as something natural.

“It is not miracles that dispose realists (or empiricists) to belief. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact. Even if he admits it, he admits it as a fact of nature till then unrecognized by him. Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith. If the realist once believes, then he is bound by his very realism to admit the miraculous also. The Apostle Thomas said that he would not believe till he saw, but when he did see he said, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Was it the miracle forced him to believe? Most likely not, but he believed solely because he desired to believe and possibly he fully believed in his secret heart even when he said, ‘I do not believe till I see.'”**

Now, as for socialism, I’ll leave that for another day. Until then, read anything on economics by Thomas Sowell.

* Dostoevsky, Fydor, The Brothers Karamazov (Barnes & Noble: New York, 2004 [1879-1880]), pg. 32.

** Ibid., pg. 31.

What did Dostoevsky mean by comparing socialism with Babel, and why did he then contrast socialism with Babel in saying that socialism strives to bring Heaven to earth (whereas at Babel they were trying to get to Heaven)?

Why Would Any Christian Support Trump?

If you needed another reason not to read “Charisma News”, then click the link and read the article…

Prophetic Dream: From Trump to Triumph

It’s interesting — Several years ago, when Bill Clinton was messing around with interns, Christians were (rightfully) angry, and wanted him impeached. Now there is Donald Trump, who appears to be even more morally inferior than Clinton, and yet there are many American Christians who support him. (Although, I would argue that most American Christians do not support Trump.) But why would any Christian support Trump?

Listening to the Trump-supporting Christians lately, I’ve come to this conclusion:

These Christians are no longer looking to the president to represent them, but are rather now looking to the president to protect them.

Protect them from what? I’ve also noticed that the Trump-supporting Christians tend to be the Christians who believe the world is going to end in the next ten years or so. And so, they believe life is soon going to be much more difficult for Christians (and there may be some truth to that). But, because of their brand of eschatology, they believe there is no more work to be done, they’ve been rejected, and they see themselves as little more than victims until Jesus comes back. They’re angry as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore.

They want to usher in the end. Their fascination with Trump is the same as their fascination with disaster movies. Despite the fact that they see Trump as the saviour of America, they really don’t care if Trump destroys the country — that’s really what they want. They see God as a revolutionary, who no longer has any influence in America other than to kill and destroy. They say they want to be triumphant in the current order of things, but secretly wish they won’t be.

If Trump does become president, and if God is behind that, then I believe that will be an act of judgement by God. An act of judgement on the American Church for selling its soul to politics. If God is using Trump, then of course it’ll lead to triumph, just in a very different way than the Trump-supporting Christians think.

Update: Here’s another recent “Charisma News” article which supports what I’ve written above…

Donald Trump is the New World Order’s Worst Nightmare

Don’t Marry Your Sister

If a young single man comes to me asking for advice on marriage…

Me: Any prospects?

Him: There are two girls. The first I’ve known for most of my life. She and I grew up together and get along great. We laugh together, we have the same interests, and we are always comfortable around each other.

Me: Is she pretty?

Him: Yeah… She is.

Me: And the other?

Him: The other I haven’t known as long, a few months. The times we spend together are great, but sometimes awkward, and that worries me.

Me: But you’re interested in her. Why?

Him: Because I think this girl is so smokin’ beautiful, and every time I see her I just want to be around her. I love the sound of her voice, her smile, her hair… everything! I just want her.

Me: But she’s a good person? She’s not selfish, or crazy?

Him: No! She’s great. That’s another thing I love about her — she’s totally a sweetheart. But I still worry because I don’t know if I’ll be as compatible with her as the other girl.

Me: Don’t worry about that. Go for the “smokin’ beautiful” girl.

“Today the incest problem is not, as we all know, a physical problem inside the family. No one really thinks of marrying his sister, but by marrying the girl with whom we went to school from our eighth to thirteenth year, we may already be making a mistake, because we have first called her as a fellow child and as a classmate and as a playmate, and such prior relationship is not the true origin of marriage…

In marriage, the sequence is: first you see the girl as somebody whom you desire, and then you add the horizon of her becoming a sister, and the mother of your children and the daughter of your parents. If we pervert this sequence, we stand things on their head, because passion is the founding element, and objectivity or realism, as we like to call it, or factualism, is always that which comes later…

(I)f we have already lived with (a girl) in (a brother/sister type of) affection, but without passion, (she) cannot become the object of passion…

If you have never spoken to the girl before, and you speak to her for the first time, there is the great experience of giving someone for the first time her name so totally that there is nothing you have to obliterate; it is really new to you. Later, she can become old and familiar to you, but at that great hour, she is somebody entering your horizon for the first time. This is called ‘introduction’ and is a mighty event.

Love needs a name given to this sweetheart or bride for the first time. Incest is every situation in which somebody has first been called by a dispassionate name like sister and is then approached with the new name of passionate love. Love must give a person a name as though we saw them for the first time; and since between mothers and sisters, brothers and fathers, there exists already one name of love, the second name would be impaired. Whenever we have already given a name of no-passion, like sister, we can never approach the situation in the way it should be approached.”

(Rosenstock-Huessy, Eugen, I Am an Impure Thinker: Tribalism, Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene, OR., 2013 [originally published by Argo Books, 2001], pg. 132-133)

I highly recommend this book: I Am an Impure Thinker by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy.

By the book here.

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