If only I had some profound comment, but I have none. I’m aware how important it is to check your accounts promptly.

The global village.

My friend in Africa told us there are AIDS-related funerals every week, and in their city of two million, they have water twice a week. My friend reminded me of one UN Millennium Development Goal: by 2015 reduce by half the number of people without safe drinking water.

I didn’t know about these goals. They are stated at http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/. But, forgive me, I don’t hold out hope that they will be achieved.

At the Judgment Christ will say to some, “I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,” (Matthew 25.35).

I am teaching the book of Revelation on Tuesday nights. While we will discuss the millennium (Revelation 20.1-8), I hadn’t thought before of discussing the Millennium Development Goals.

Can you persuade somebody that you care about their eternal destiny, if you could care less about their having no safe drinking water?

It’s virtually impossible to know objective scientific fact (so-called). For example, suppose a videographer recorded the assassination of JFK, even that won’t provide an inerrant record of events.

We question whether biblical stories are true because we doubt them. We don’t constantly question the sun; we accept its reality. But our continual debates about whether biblical stories go back to actual events may arise from doubts that such events occurred, in any form.

“Objective scientific history” is a myth of the modern age. The moment something occurs, the reality of it begins to recede into the past. Human finitude places it beyond absolute knowledge.

But we can know with a high degree of certainty that an event occurred, without having total command of “objective scientific data” about it. To say that we cannot know the precise details of the life of Abraham is not to say that it doesn’t matter whether he lived, or is simply a story or legend.

I relate today to Abraham in precisely the same way that I relate to the good Samaritan: through the biblical story. Of course it matters that Abraham lived in ancient Mesopotamia about 3500 years ago, whereas the good Samaritan is a character in one of Jesus’ parables. Nevertheless, as a reader and a believer, I relate to both in the same way, the only way that is available to me.

(Another kettle of fish is the question of whether reality itself is a story in the mind of God.)

Endlessly debating the degree of objective historical veracity in a biblical account is like a dog chasing its tail – it goes on ad nauseum and gets you nowhere.

I don’t want the Bible to be “objective scientific history.” That’s way too small and too leaky a boat to trust eternal truth to.

What I’ve been reading in the interim includes: Tony Hillerman, author of great mysteries that feature a Navajo detective; N. T. Wright, author of Simply Christian and Mark for Everyone. Also books about Celtic spirituality by Esther de Waal and others.

Celtic spirituality is very exciting. I’ve begun to recite St. Patrick’s breastplate every morning, the classic 8th century prayer.

Wright describes a powerful metaphor for our age, that is the age we’re just emerging from: the dictator has paved over every spring, every well, every river – in short every source of water. He requires people to drink from authorized pipes only, and puts additives in the water at will. Now, however, water bursts through the concrete; muddy water floods everywhere.

Water represents spirituality. Since the Enlightenment, people in the West have been trained to ignore matters of spirit, except those coming through authorized channels, the mainline churches, which often present a tame version of spirituality. Since the mid-60s, however, people have been seeking for all things spiritual, often without discerning that some are positive and some are not.

Wright’s metaphor is compelling to me. People are hungry and thirsty for spiritual truth, but as the song says, they are “looking for love in all the wrong places.”

Well, it’s good to be back. I promise to write regularly. Please comment to let you know you’re there. Shalom!

You discover the less confident man in letters to his friend and biographer Eberhard Bethge. In these letters he speaks of being unable to catch his breath, reciting hymns and scripture to gain composure; of suicidal thoughts, once; of sexual longings, although this discussion is highly intellectualized; of being tempted to sleep late, rather than rise on schedule, do calisthenics, and write.

Throughout the world there remain prisoners of conscience. I pray for them. I pray for their release. I pray for a better world.

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The death of Osama bin Ladin. I support the President’s decision to get him, and applaud the courage of the SEALs and others involved.

As a veteran of the SBC Church Struggle years ago, I saw this happen a lot. Good people who refused to see, refused to hear—lest they turn and be saved.

The great tragedy is that willful stupidity, intentional blindness/deafness if you will, infects groups of people, and renders them vulnerable to misrule by tyrants.

If scientists are right, and our world is ticking away toward ecological meltdown, then we can expect God to call on us to throw our lives away on behalf of the children of the future, from whom we have borrowed and are squandering the world.

Bultmann worked at de-mythologizing the NT, an enterprise reversed by Tolkien and Campbell. Turns out myth is language for truth humans have no language for. Tillich used psychology and philosophy to translate the obscure language of philosophy into an unknown tongue of his own devising. Bonhoeffer’s rather startling terms such as “man come of age” and “religionless Christianity” must be put into the context of his imprisonment and resistance to Nazi Germany and the churches’ failure to oppose effectively.

I found a careful discussion of Robinson by NT Wright online, which was helpful.

Next I’m tackling a first reading of volume 8 in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works/English, Letters and Papers from Prison.

I found a copy of John AT Robinson’s Honest to God (1963), which presented a brash, shocking version of Bonhoeffer’s ideas to the world; in so doing, he served to give push to the need for a careful, wholistic presentation of Bonhoeffer’s writing—which has led to the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (German and English).

I’m fascinated by Christians of the WWII period who were in resistance to totalitarian regimes. I’m not totally sure why. I think we have much to learn.

The tyranny of our world is not political or by overt force in many cases (countries like Libya, Burma, Latin American dictatorships, and China being exceptions). Rather, it is social: the understated pressure of advertising, peer groups, and neighborhood associations. It is financial, the burden of maintaining a certain lifestyle at any cost. It is the sneering laughter of the cynical and sophisticated (see C.S. Lewis’s third sci fi novel). It is the silence of a church, numbed by prosperity and approval.

The structures of tyranny are corporate. Injustice is outsourced, made invisible. Decisions made in New York affect West Africa, China, Indonesia.

Our Neighborhood MeetUP viewed a film on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor who collaborated with German leaders seeking to kill Hitler. Bonhoeffer wrote extensively about the Christian life, including Discipleship and Life Together, a description of daily life at an illegal seminary in Nazi Germany.

Discipleship is primarily an exposition of the Sermon on the Mount.

Bonhoeffer faced an impossible choice: either the defeat of his nation or the destruction of Christian civilization. He found that traditional ethics could not guide him. Therefore, he threw himself on the mercy of God and did what seemed right to him in the situation where he found himself.

Many Christians who lived in countries under the heel of Nazi Germany faced similar dilemmas. The ten Boom family of Holland also compromised traditional Christian values, such as obeying the laws of the state, always telling the truth, and so one— in order to achieve a higher good, resistance to tyranny and rescue of its victims.

In light of such historical events, a lot of Christian discourse today strikes me as irrelevant. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of persons die of preventable causes. Global warming and other ecological issues call the future of the planet into question. People of all faiths have more in common with each other than with people who share language, nationality, and other factors but lack a common worldview.

It’s time to rethink many of the basics. I’m looking forward to reading Rob Bell’s new book Love Wins. I understand Bell tackles many of these questions.