The Voice of God

Today, I went to The Waffle House, a local restaurant, to get takeout breakfast for myself and my wife. When I got home, my wife was still in bed so I called her name and said "Get up!"

Out of a deep sleep, she suddenly shot straight up and looked around the room, breathing heavily. Then she laughed.

"I was dead asleep, " she explained. "I thought it was the Lord calling me home!"

One day we will all hear the Lord's voice, some to their great delight, others not so much.

Book Comment: Fruit Happens!

Michael Christopher’s book, Fruit Happens!, (2010) is a free Christian young adult novel distributed by the 1687 Foundation. The short (only 112 pages) is the story of an old man named Dellie O’Shea who is reminiscing about his boyhood adventures.  He is a retired stage singer and dancer who describes himself as  “little person” since he is 37 inches tall.

Dellie has adventures with a girl he probably loves. Her name is Paisley Baker, but Dellie calls her “Cake.”. “I’d known for some time that Cake Baker went to church every Sunday, but I hadn’t held it against her.”

This is a doctrinally sound book written in a conversational style.  The book is an easy read for its intended age group of age 10 to 14 year old readers. The point of the book is to explain the Fruits of the Spirit and how they develop in a believer.  The process of Sanctification is explained. The novel does a very good job of that. I do have problems with this book, however.

1.     All the children have the same “voice.” One of the marks of good fiction is the establishment of clearly discernable characters who “read” differently from one another.  The children all speak like adults. In fact, they all speak like the same adult, clearly the author.

2.     The book reads like a disguised sermon.

3.     The Bible study meetings develop along the lines of an outline with each child adding just the insight that is needed at that moment in the exposition.

4.     I do not think that any teenager who is not already a Christian will read this book. It will hold no appeal for non-Christians.

The book is a very clear in its explanation of several doctrinal points:

1.     The fruits of the Spirit are not natural to us. They develop within Christian believers because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

2.     The fruits of the Spirit build gradually, with one leading to the next. God is conforming us to Christ. Sometimes we humans lurch forward in starts and sputters. The problem lies with us, not God.

3.     There are suggestions and study questions provided to aid the reader in expressing the fruits of the Spirit.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23

"Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible®,
Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973,
1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation 
Used by permission." (www.Lockman.org)

A link with a children’s sermon about the fruits of the spirit:

http://www.sermons4kids.com/fruit_of_the_spirit.htm

A Beautiful A Cappella Version of Amazing Grace

A beautiful a cappella version of Amazing Grace. The a cappella style of music utilizes human voices presented without the use of musical instruments. The word a cappella is of Italian origin and translates as "according to chapel, " meaning sung like a chant without musical instruments.


/www.godtube.com/watch/?v=JFME1JNU

The Voice of the Bible

The process of understanding films is like the process of understanding any other human knowledge.  The key is repetition and quantity of exposure until one begins to see patterns.  This is why a skilled physician sometimes knows what is wrong with you before you finish describing your symptoms.  The offensive tackle on the line of scrimmage in an American football game knows the play the other team is about to run by the way in which the opposing team’s players are standing.   The chess master knows the next six moves you are about to make and how he will respond to each.

In film theory, a theory popularized by director/actor Francois Truffaut is the auteur theory.   The theory posits that the author of a film is the true author of a film, putting his or her unmistakable stamp on the final product.  The theory holds that while great actors or producers can, and occasionally do, elevate films, the major artist of a film is the director.  The “voice” of a director is discernable when viewing the director’s output as a whole over the course of their career.

When you listen to Mozart every piece of music is different but every piece is also the same, and every piece yells “Mozart!”  It is the same with film directors: Alfred Hitchcock (an innocent is caught up in events outside of his control), Akira Kurosawa (the master and disciple, heroic champions, and cycles of extreme violence), Jean-Luc Goddard (Marxist themes), Luis Bunuel (opposition to organized religion and to traditional morality),  Naruse Mikio (female protagonists caught in bleak and pessimistic situations, with emotions raging under a calm surface), Martin Scorscese (morally ambiguous protagonists who are often prone to violence and feelings of guilt),  Ingmar Bergman (mortality, loneliness, sexual desire, religious faith),  Tim Burton (the misunderstood outsider who unintentionally hurts those for whom he cares),  David Cronenberg (the uncomfortable merging of mankind and technology),  Jacques Tati (the humor in normal everyday events), etc.

Just like a film director's body of work, the Bible has an identifiable voice, even though it was written by at least forty different people.  It is remarkably self-consistent.  Doctrine derived from the Bible can be judged as to its orthodoxy by its consistency with the total body of scripture.  It truly can be said that the Bible has multiple authors and one author.

Those who claim that the Bible contains contradictions fail to understand a basic principle: God's ways are not our ways.  Our understanding is limited; God's is infinite.  Rather than contradictions, the Bible is full of paradoxes in which both answers are true.  The Bible has multiple authors and one author. True freedom comes from submitting oneself as a slave to the Lord.  Both free will and predestination are clearly taught in the Bible.  Christians are strict monotheists but God exists as Three Persons.  Jesus is fully human and fully divine.  Jesus was at the same time a poor man and also the king of the universe.  God demands perfection but we are incapable on our own of ever fulfilling the demand. We are to be in the world but not of the world.