Meanderings, 16 November 2024

Good morning! With the election in our rear view mirror, Kris and I admit to enjoying the distraction of college basketball — both women and men. We enjoyed a good performance last night by the UConn women’s team. It looks like Illinois will have a fun men’s team to watch this winter. We are enjoying the changing of the colors in the autumn trees, too.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

I’ve begun working the last volume in the Everyday Bible Study guides. For me, one of the best was saved to last: Hebrews. Some of my conversation partners are David deSilva, Gareth Cockerill, Amy Peeler, and Madison Pierce.

Only in CA?

LOS ANGELES (AP) — California has seen its share of bears breaking into cars. But bears caught on camera entering luxury cars tipped off insurers that something wasn’t quite right.

In what it has dubbed “Operation Bear Claw,” the California Insurance Department said four Los Angeles residents were arrested Wednesday, accused of defrauding three insurance companies out of nearly $142,000 by claiming a bear had caused damage to their vehicles.

The group is accused of providing video footage from the San Bernardino Mountains in January of a bear moving inside a Rolls-Royce and two Mercedes to the insurance companies as part of their damage claims, the department said. Photos provided by the insurance department show what appeared to be scratches on the seats and doors.

The company viewing video of the Rolls-Royce suspected it was not a bear inside, but someone in a bear costume. …

The department had a biologist from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife review the three videos, who concluded it was “clearly a human in a bear suit,” the insurance department said.

After executing a search warrant, detectives found the bear costume in the suspects’ home, the department said.

Political docetism:

One of the earliest Christian heresies was that of docetism. This heretical claim argued that Jesus only appeared to have a human body (deriving from the Greek “to seem”). It expressed itself either through the absolute rejection of a human body associated with Jesus or that Jesus held a human body while Christ did not. It was rejected at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD as a failure to steward biblical Christology faithfully. If Jesus was not fully God and fully human, then our salvation was jeopardized. Christ could not save what he wasn’t.

Even though it was decisively defeated as a doctrine, its residue remains. We continue to feel the need to explain the connection between the body and spirit of Christ. What was expressed as a profound mystery by the earliest councils has become a thorn in the modern church, post-Enlightenment imagination (or lack thereof). We find ourselves arguing Nestorian arrangements of Christ’s parts (50% of each in the person of Jesus, also a heresy) or overcompensating to the Ebionite claim that Christ was fully human, an exemplary prophet (equally a heresy). Our failure to embrace mystery amid our hyper-rational worldview has disenchanted our theology. Rather than submit in wonder to the God-man, we scientifically attempt to control the narrative and eschew any mystery that might invite us to worship.

We should not be surprised that if we’re suspicious of Christ's two natures, our suspicion will naturally spill over into a questionable view of humanity. How do the two natures relate to us? What is spirit? What is mind? Where does the body stop and the mind begin? Is the mind simply the brain? How do we differentiate emotions and reason?

If we are made in the image of God and Jesus is God in the flesh. The relationship between Christology and anthropology is as simple as looking in the mirror and realizing your humanity is directly tied to the imago Dei.

American politics has been reduced to a very pessimistic docetism. We don’t see humanity first. Instead, we see a person’s politics (and the worst version of those politics). I’ve talked with those who vote Republican who cannot imagine being friends with a Democrat and vice versa. These two voters have much in common, but whether they float a D or an R matters more than their shared humanity.

We kill one another by simply disregarding the other’s humanity. Both sides stoke fear. Both sides act like their candidate for the White House cares about them individually. Both are lulled into a failure to understand power distance and that their neighbor who voted differently should be more responsive to their needs than whoever occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

On choosing a pastor, what to look for:

Two Important Questions

Finally, ask yourself two questions.

First, do I want to become like this pastor?
Pastors leave footprints in the sand for others to follow. If your sons and daughters follow those footsteps and become like this pastor, will you be pleased? I often meet people who express fear of their pastor, and then I watch as, over time, their children come to fear their parents. You become like your pastor.

Second, do I want to read the Bible as this pastor reads it?
You learn how to read the Bible like the people you read the Bible with. If a pastor interprets the Bible harshly or if the reading is unloving, such is yours likely to become. A reading that bores you will turn people toward the back door. A reading of the Bible that subjugates women will subjugate others. A reading of the Bible that condemns others will eventually condemn you because it is a reading that allows condemnation. If you don’t want to read the Bible in a way that subjugates and condemns, then don’t follow a pastor who promotes such readings in the church. Look for a pastor who reads the Bible widely, generously, accurately, lovingly, peacefully, gently, joyfully, and kindly. To summarize, a good pastor is one who lives like Jesus and wants others to join in the journey of learning together how to live like Jesus.

This is an excerpt from Invisible Jesus: A Book about Leaving the Church and Looking for Christ (pp. 145-147), by Scot McKnight and Tommy Preson Phillips. Published by Zondervan.

There’s a koala in our bed!

Koalas are normally found in eucalyptus trees, but one couple came home in Australia on Wednesday and were shocked to find one in their bedroom.

“I was scared, happy and excited at the same time,” Fran Dias Rufino told CNN from Adelaide in South Australia.

Rufino, who moved to Australia from Brazil, posted the unexpected encounter on Instagram, saying she was lost for words upon seeing the marsupial inside her home.

“I was so nervous that I forgot my English,” she wrote in an Instagram post, with the observation “Only in Australia.”

That’s a long trip:

An osprey hatched in a south suburban forest preserve has been found more than 2,500 miles from home in South America.

The osprey was found injured in Colombia and nurtured back to health, according to the Forest Preserves of Cook County.

“When I was told that it was Colombia, I was thinking Columbia, Missouri first,” said Chris Anchor, a Forest Preserve senior wildlife biologist. “And when they told me it was actually Colombia, the country, I was rather incredulous.”

The bird was originally banded by Cook County biologists at Sag Quarries in Lemont, where there are 20 nesting platforms for raptors.

Cook County biologists annually measure, weigh, draw blood and check for overall signs of health in recently hatched osprey chicks. Each nesting pair can produce one to four chicks a year.

The conservation effort started in the 1980s after major declines in the osprey, bald eagle and peregrine falcon populations caused, in part, by DDT insecticide use from the 1950s to early 1970s.

Ospreys fly south the winter after they hatch, usually to the Gulf Coast, where they remain for two years as they become sexually mature and find a mate before returning to where they hatched.

Yes, this is for real:

(The Conversation) — A growing movement believes President-elect Donald Trump is fighting a spiritual war against demonic forces within the United States. Trump himself stated in his acceptance speech on Nov. 6, 2024, that the reason that “God spared my life” was to “restore America to greatness.”

I have studied various religious movements that seek to shape and control American society. One of these is the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, whose followers believe that they are waging a spiritual battle for control of the United States. NAR is an offshoot of Protestant Christian evangelicalism.

NAR advocates claim they receive divine guidance in reconstructing modern society based on Christian spiritual beliefs. In 2015, an estimated 3 million adult Americans attended churches that were openly part of NAR. Some scholars estimate that the number of active NAR adherents may be larger, as the movement may include members of Protestant Christian churches that are not directly aligned with the NAR movement.