A Touch of Humor - The Pessimist

Is it good to have positive expectations? Is it ever good to pour cold water on others' expectations?

Old Erich Proverb - Change

People can only truly be changed from the inside; laws and governments are powerless to accomplish this.

A Voice from the Past - Gregory the Great

 (Written to the Emperor's Physician)
The Emperor of Heaven, the Lord of men and angels, has sent thee his epistles for thy life's behoof; and yet, glorious son, thou neglectest to read these epistles ardently. Study then, I beseech thee, and daily mediate on the words of thy Creator. Learn the heart of God in the words of God, that thou mayest sigh more ardently for the things that are eternal, that your soul may be kindled with greater longings for heavenly joys.

Gregory the Great, Epistles of Gregory the Great, 540-604 AD, To Theodorus, Physician, (The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Volume XII, translated by James Barmby, Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, editors,T & T Clark and Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1997, p.156)

What should our attitude be toward the the Word of God? How do we develop it?

The Strange Case of Apollonius of Tyana

Appollonius of Tyana was what many would claim Jesus of Nazareth was. I think it is helpful to compare and contrast the two men. Appollonius was a standard moral philosopher who gave out moral maxims similar to those of other philosophers of the day. He also was claimed to have accomplished certain miraculous deeds, the deliverance of a demon-possessed individual, deliverance from a vampire, and an encounter with the ghost of Achilles. He was also said to have lived a exceptionally long life and to have mysteriously disappeared when called before the emperor. Given that he lived somewhat after the time of Jesus, I suspect these stories were inspired by the stories of Jesus, but I cannot prove it. There were also a number of stories told about him that fit, not into the miraculous, but the fantastic. (The miraculous is that which involves supernatural intervention; the fantastic is things seen as part of the normal, natural world that are not credible.)  These included levitating Hindu magicians, lilliputian-sized men, and fights between elephants and dragons. But the impression given is of a fairly standard philosopher who had various interesting legends tacked on to him. Because he was just a fairly standard philosopher, it is not really clear why he should have had these miraculous powers. And because he was a fairly standard philosopher, in spite of his supposed miraculous powers, he never developed much of a following and vanished quietly into obscurity.

Jesus, however, is never in any of the accounts of Him presented as a standard moral philosopher. The basic letters of Paul, generally considered the earliest sources on Christianity, present Him as the Son of God who came to pay the price for sins and rose from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:1-20; Romans 1:4; Galatians 3:6-14). The gospels also clearly put forth this idea (Mark 10:45; Matthew 11:27; 23:34). Even the pagan observers, such as Pliny the Younger and Lucian, characterize Christians as worshiping Jesus as God. The miraculous is not tacked on embroidery, as in Appollonius,  but is the very heart of the message. It is difficult to see, if Jesus were simply like Appollonius, how His message could have gotten so completely changed in that short a period. Also, if Jesus had been in no way different from Appollonius, He would have suffered the fate of Appollonius and disappeared into a footnote in the history books. Now this does not prove Jesus was who He claimed to be. He could have been a clever swindler or some form of madman. But it does cast considerable doubt on the idea that Jesus was a great moral teacher who legends grew up around. We know what that looks like, and we know its fate.

Revealing the Father - John 1:16-18

The Difference

Since before recorded history, human beings have sought a higher power or powers. This may have been for moral purity or for life after death. Or it may just have been for better crops or larger herds. And they have looked in many different ways in many different places. They followed moral rules and tried to be better people. But there was always the question of how much was enough to be good enough to please God or the gods. They sought some higher experience that would allow them to commune with the Ultimate. And they followed various procedures to further that experience. But this led them many different ways, and it was not clear whether they were really making contact with something beyond themselves or what it was. Others created ceremonies and rituals calculated to placate the gods or spirits or even manipulate them to do the worshiper's will. But these did not produce consistent results. Then the philosophers tried to reason it out. And they came out with many different theories and could not agree beyond the rudiments. And in all these approaches they sought long and hard, but reached no definite conclusion, and certainly none they could agree on.

But the claim of Christianity is totally different. It is that God revealed Himself to us. Further, we claim that God not only revealed Himself, but became a human being and walked among us. He did this to pay the price for all the wrong things we have done and make a way we could be reconciled to Him. Also, this is accomplished, not by trusting in the things we can do to seek God, but in what He did to seek us. This is fundamentally a different approach to the issue. This does not itself prove it is true, but it requires us to take notice. And we need to ask, how do we respond to this radical set of claims? And for those of us who embrace this truth, we need to avoid slipping back into other ways of looking at things. It is easy to change the emphasis from what God has done to what we do. We do not need a new moral system; we have plenty of those. We do not need a new philosophical system; we have plenty of those too. We need God to intervene and save us. Because without that, we are just spinning our wheels.

A Touch of Humor - A Tale of Two St. Nicks

Is it helpful to associate Santa Claus and the older stories of St. Nicholas? What is the best way to do this if it is done?