Sunday, May 28, 2006 

Fifty Fruits of Pride-Part 2

26. I have a know-it-all attitude. I am impressed by my own knowledge. I feel like there isn't much I can learn from other people, especially those less mature than me.

27. I have a hard time listening to ordinary people. I listen better to those I respect or people I want to leave with a good impression. I don't honestly listen when someone else is speaking because I am usually planning what I am going to say next.

28. I like to reveal my own mind. I have an answer for practically every situation. I feel compelled to balance everyone else out.

29. I interrupt people regularly. I don't let people finish what they are saying.

30. I feel compelled to stop people when they start to share something with me I already know.

31. I find it hard to admit it when I don't know something. When someone asks me something I don't know, I will make up an answer rather than admit I don't know.

32. I don't get much out of Bible teaching. I tend to evaluate the speaker rather than my own life. I grumble about hearing something a second time.

33. I listen to teaching with other people in mind. I constantly think of those folks who need to hear this teaching and wish they were here.

34. I'm not very open to input. I don't pursue correction for my life. I tend to be unteachable and slow to repent when corrected. I don't really see correction as a positive thing. I am offended when people probe the motivations of my heart or seek to adjust me.

35. I have a hard time admitting that I am wrong. I find myself covering up or excusing my sins. It is hard for me to confess my sins to others or to ask for forgiveness.

36. I view correction as an intrusion into my privacy rather than an instrument of God for my welfare. I can't identify anyone who would feel welcome to correct me.

37. I resent people who attempt to correct me. I don't respond with gratefulness and sincere appreciation for their input. Instead I am tempted to accuse them and dwell on their faults. I get bitter and withdraw.

38. When corrected, I become contentious and argumentative. I don't take people's observations seriously. I minimize and make excuses or give explanations.

39. I am easily angered and offended. I don't like being crossed or disagreed with. I find myself thinking, "I can't believe they did that to me." I often feel wronged.

40. I have "personality conflicts" with others. I have a hard time getting along with certain kinds of people.

41. I lack respect for other people. I don't think very highly of most people. I have a hard time encouraging and honoring others unless they really do something great.

42. I am a slanderer. I find myself either giving or receiving evil reports about others. I justify this by thinking the things I say or hear are simply true about them. I deceive myself by a lack of concern about the effect of slander on me because of my supposed maturity level. I think I can handle it. I convince myself I only share with others the things I really think they legitimately need to know. I don't tell all.

43. I am divisive. I tend to resist or resent authority. I don't like other people giving me orders or directions or even guidance and advise.

44. I like to demean or put others down. At times I think people need to be adjusted and put in their place. This includes leaders. I focus on the need for others to be humble and have a "sober" assessment of themselves.

45. I tend to be critical of others. I find myself feeling or talking negatively about people. I subtlety feel better about myself when I see how bad someone else is.

46. I am self-willed and stubborn. I have a hard time cooperating with others. I really prefer my own way and often insist on getting it.

47. I am independent and uncommitted. I don't really see why I need other people. I can easily separate myself from others. I don't get much out of the small group meetings in the church.

48. I am unaccountable. I don't ask others to hold me responsible to follow through on my commitments. I don't really need accountability for my words and actions.

49. I am unsubmissive. I don't like being under the authority of another person. I don't see submission as a good and necessary provision from God for my life. I have a hard time supporting and serving those over me. I don't "look up" to people and I like to be in charge. Other people may need leaders but I don't. It is important that my voice is heard.

50. I really appreciate somebody taking the time to put this paper together. It will really be a big help to my friends and family. However, I don't really need this because I think I'm pretty humble already.

1:05 p.m. | |

Thursday, May 25, 2006 

Fifty Fruits of Pride-Part 1

Fifty Fruits of Pride

1. I tend to be self sufficient in the way I live my life. I don't live with a constant awareness that my every breath is dependent upon the will of God. I tend to think I have enough strength, ability and wisdom to live and manage my life. My practice of the spiritual disciplines is inconsistent and superficial. I don't like to ask others for help.

2. I am often anxious about my life and the future. I tend not to trust God and rarely experience his abiding and transcendent peace in my soul. I have a hard time sleeping at night because of fearful thoughts and burdens I carry.

3. I am overly self-conscious. I tend to replay in my mind how I did, what I said, how I came across to others, etc. I am very concerned about what people think of me. I think about these things constantly.

4. I fear man more than God. I am afraid of others and make decisions about what I will say or do based upon this fear. I am afraid to take a stand for things that are right. I am concerned with how people will react to me or perceive my actions or words. I don't often think about God's opinion in a matter and rarely think there could be consequences for disobeying him. I primarily seek the approval of man and not of God.

5. I often feel insecure. I don't want to try new things or step out into uncomfortable situations because I'm afraid I'll fail or look foolish. I am easily embarrassed.

6. I regularly compare myself to others. I am performance oriented. I feel that I have greater worth if I do well.

7. I am self-critical. I tend to be a perfectionist. I can't stand for little things to be wrong because they reflect poorly on me. I have a hard time putting my mistakes behind me.

8. I desire to receive credit and recognition for what I do. I like people to see what I do and let me know that they noticed. I feel hurt or offended when they don't. I am overly concerned about my reputation and hate being misunderstood.

9. I want people to be impressed with me. I like to make my accomplishments known.

10. I tend to be deceptive about myself. I find myself lying to preserve my reputation. I find myself hiding the truth about myself, especially about sins, weaknesses, etc. I don't want people to know who I really am.

11. I am selfishly ambitious. I really want to get ahead. I like having a position or title. I far prefer leading to following.

12. I am overly competitive. I always want to win or come out on top and it bothers me when I don't.

13. I like to be the center of attention and will say or do things to draw attention to myself.

14. I like to talk, especially about myself or persons or things I am involved with. I want people to know what I am doing or thinking. I would rather speak than listen.

15. I am self-serving. When asked to do something, I find myself asking, "How will doing this help me, or will I be inconvenienced?"

16. I am not very excited about seeing or making others successful. I tend to feel envious, jealous or critical towards those who are doing well or being honored.

17. I feel special or superior because of what I have or do. For example: * my house * my neighborhood * my physical gifting * my spiritual giftings * my intellect * being a Christian * my position * my job * my education * my car * my salary * my looks

18. I think highly of myself. In relation to others I typically see myself as more mature and more gifted. In most situations, I have more to offer than others even though I may not say so. I don't consider myself average or ordinary.

19. I tend to give myself credit for who I am and what I accomplish. I only occasionally think about or recognize that all that I am or have comes from God.

20. I tend to be self-righteous. I can think that I really have something to offer God. I would never say so, but I think God did well to save me. I seldom think about or recognize my utter depravity and helplessness apart from God. I fail to realize that any goodness I have comes from God alone.

21. I feel deserving. I think I deserve what I have. In fact, I think I ought to have more considering how well I have lived or in light of all I have done.

22. I often feel ungrateful. I tend to grumble about what I have or my lot in life.

23. I find myself wallowing in self-pity. I am consumed with how I am treated by God and others. I tend to feel mistreated or misunderstood. I seldom recognize or sympathize with what's going on with others around me because I feel that I have it worse than they do.

24. I can be jealous or envious of others abilities, possessions, positions, or accomplishments. I want to be what others are or want to have what others have. I find it hard to rejoice with others when they are blessed by God.

25. I am pretty insensitive to others. I feel that some people just aren't worth caring about.

10:23 a.m. | |

Tuesday, May 23, 2006 

How to make your very own Jesus

How to Make Your Very Own Jesus
by Daniel J. Phillips

For ages, people have found Jesus to be an uncomfortable figure. He claimed honors belonging properly only to God (John 5:22, 23), held Himself out as the only solution for sin (Matthew 20:28), and accepted worship as God (John 20:28). What’s even more threatening, He backed up these claims by a succession of unequaled miracles (John 15:24), climaxing in His own bodily resurrection (Matthew 12:39, 40).

Like many of Jesus’ other ideas, these claims are clearly "incorrect," politically and socially. Worse still, they’re unpopular!

Not to worry! If you don’t like the Jesus of the Bible, you can make your very own "Jesus." Here’s how to do it, in six easy steps.

Begin with demolition work. First, paint the Gospels as fundamentally unreliable, unhistorical, and biased. Now, this will mean rough going, for several reasons. If you are to pull this off, your audience has to be unaware of the last hundred years of New Testament (NT) studies. Otherwise, they will know that every attempt to discredit the NT has failed miserably. They will remember that archeological, linguistic, and historical studies have systematically shown the NT to be factually reliable in every testable area. If they know the facts, it could hurt your theories. So. . . .

Second, flash some impressive academic degrees. This might inspire people to reason thus: "He must be right — after all, he’s a [doctor, professor, what-have-you]!" Pull this off, and you can wave aside the Gospel histories as "biased." With your degree, your hearers will forget that you, too, are biased. They won’t wonder too loudly what your biases are. They won’t even note how neatly your conclusions match your biases.

Third, stress the fact that the NT writers were believers in Jesus, as if this consideration in itself totally disqualifies them as witnesses of history. With any luck, this will strengthen your case for "bias." Maybe only the lawyers will notice that your reasoning is akin to telling a defendant, "Now, you can only call witnesses who believe that you are guilty!" Besides, probably over half of your audience won’t remember that the NT writers did not, in fact, start out as believers. Therefore, they won't realize that these writers' minds were changed by the evidence. Maybe those who do remember will not throw back at you, "Then what you are saying is invalid, too, because you are a dis-believer! Bias is bias!"

Fourth, make a great deal of the fact that the Gospels were written after the events. Imply (against all evidence) that nobody in the first century ever took notes, or knew how to memorize. Your readers may be unaware that the hard evidence does not demand a date of final publication more than ten to forty years later than the resurrection. You go ahead and talk as if it were vast, yawning geological epochs later. Maybe no one will notice. So few actually read the Bible today, that they are unlikely to recall that the Gospels embody eyewitness testimony (Luke 1:1-4; John 21:24, 25). If someone brings this up, simply shout, "Are not, are not!" — and maybe wave your diploma again.

With luck, your hearers won’t reflect on the fact that they all implicitly trust in history-books written centuries, or even millennia after the events. With a lot of luck, they won’t point out that you yourself live a full two millennia after the gospel events, and that (even if true) fifty or sixty years is much closer than two thousand.

Fifth, claim to be using "the scientific method." Actually, it doesn’t much matter what method you employ; people are not too analytical these days. Dust off the radical whimsies of nineteenth-century Tübingen, or the fantasies of Rudolph Bultmann. Shred logic to confetti. Who thinks rationally or logically today, especially about religion? You can recycle negatively-biased methods and arguments that have already been answered decisively, dozens of times, in print, for decades — as the perpetrators of the Jesus Seminar and the book The Five Gospels just did! It doesn’t matter. Simply intone, reverently, "Science...science...science," tap your diploma meaningfully, and hope for the best.

Sixth, nuke all those nasty things Jesus said. Clear your throat and announce that He never claimed, "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6). Proclaim that Jesus never invited anyone to "come to Me, all who labor and are heavily-burdened, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:26). Use a little verbal "white-out" on Jesus’ predictions that He would give His soul as a ransom-price for many (Mark 10:45), that He would be crucified and buried, and would rise again on the third day (Luke 9:22), and that He would physically return to set up His kingdom on earth (Matthew 24 — 25). Declare that Jesus never really said that the one who rejects Him as God incarnate will perish in his sins (John 8:24).

You see, this way you have taken that frightening, still-living character who treads through the Gospels, and whittled Him down to something much more bite-sized. Trash the facts, and you can make Jesus into whatever you want Him to be! "Discover" that He was really an environmentalist, and declare that He only made lovely little remarks about lilies, fig trees, and grape vines. "Learn" that Jesus was a social activist, and retain only the sections about poor people. Folks will love you for it! Publishers will actually print your notions! Without any icky facts in your way, you can play with Jesus like a lump of clay!

Isn’t that nifty? Think of it: when Jesus’ contemporaries wanted Him out of the way two millennia ago, they had to have Him actually put to death. (That worked out poorly, however, since He apparently did not coöperate by staying dead.) It’s so much less messy, now!

All we have to do today is snag a degree, and write a book.

[NOTE: written as an article for a daily newspaper, skewering "the Jesus Seminar," its pompous pronouncements, and its book The Five Gospels, by means of parody.]

Copyright © 1997 by Daniel J. Phillips; All Rights Reserved

11:56 a.m. | |

Wednesday, May 10, 2006 

Al Mohler to appear on O'Reilly Factor tonight...

Dr. Mohler is scheduled to appear tonight on Fox News Channel’s “O’Reilly Factor.” Mohler will discuss controversial comments by the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Australia in which he said the Koran is riddled with “invocations to violence” and indicated that Islam is an intolerant religion.

“The O’Reilly Factor” airs at 8:00 PM (EST) on the Fox News Channel and repeats at 11:00 PM (EST).

9:47 a.m. | |

Sunday, May 07, 2006 

Does God exist....A man breathing oxygen.

"Imagine a man sanding in your front yard arguing oxygen doesn't exist. The man has to breathe in oxygen to even begin to argue that it doesn't exist. In the analogy, oxygen represents the existence of God. In order for a man to argue that the God of the Bible doesn't exist, he has to employ certain gifts that only God alone can account for. Namely reason and logic, and by doing so he's borrowing from the very one he's trying to prove doesn't exist."

-Greg Bohnson

Quoted on the radio show 'The Atheist Hour', aired Dec 18th 2005 by Pastor Gene Cook (can be found at www.unchainedradio.com )

4:40 a.m. | |

About me

  • I'm TwinsK&D
  • From Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • Oh, this is about us...um...well theres two of us and we're twins. We both attend Grace Fellowship Church in Toronto, Canada. We love Jesus Christ and long to be more like Him and to desire Him above all things!
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