Pastor Joshua Harris writes,

I am often asked if I still agree with what I wrote in my first book I Kissed Dating Goodbye. The answer is that I do, but I’m quick to state that I’ve never claimed that the ideas I share in it are for everyone, nor that my book is or should be the final word on Christian relationships. The book is simply me at 21-years-old sharing my personal journey of learning to honor God with romance and relationships.

Read the rest of his post at his blog.

So I am all done my first semester at Southern! I handed in my last paper this afternoon, went over to check out the apartment that’s been offered to me, and just started packing my duffel bag for the bus ride home (mostly books lol)!

I also just checked my email and found this in the “Junk” folder. Apparently, I could be the next-of-kin of a certain Mr. W. A. Leung… I’m not sure how he’s figured out my name, but it is certainly public information. *I am tempted to mess this guy up and tell him to send a check (not cheque) to my mailbox here in Kentucky!!

If you want to spam this supposed Douglas James barrister character, feel free to do so at douglasroyalchambers@yahoo.com

FROM BARRISTER DOUGLAS JAMES.
ADDRESS /45 RUE DE COURT COMPLEX.
P.O. BOX 5471 ACCRA GHANA WEST AFRICA.
TELEPHONE:+233 245-865-360

Dear Alex Leung,

I am Barrister Douglas James, a solicitor at law, personal attorney to Mr. W.A. Leung,a national Of your country, who used to work with Shell Development Company in Republic of Ghana. Here in after shall be referred to as my client. On the 21st of April 2004, my client, his wife and their only daughter were involved in auto crash along ecowas express road. All occupants of the vehicle unfortunately lost there lives. Since then I have made several enquiries to your embassy here to locate any of my clients extended relatives, this has also proved unsuccessful.

After these several unsuccessful attempts,I decided to track his last name over the Internet, to locate any member of his family hence I contacted you.I have contacted you to assist in repartrating the fund valued at usd$11.5million left behind by my client before it gets confisicated or declared unserviceable by the BANK OF GHANA where this huge amount was deposited. The said Bank has issued me a notice to provide the next of kin or have his account confisicated within the next twenty one official working days. Since I have been unsuccesfull in locating the relatives for over 2years now, I seek the consent to present you as the next of kin to the deceased since you have the same last names, so that the proceeds of this account can be paid to you.

Therefore, on receipt of your positive response, we shall then discuss the sharing ratio and modalities for transfer.I have all necessary information and legal documents needed to back you up for claim. All I require from you is your honest cooperation to enable us see this transaction through. I guarantee that this will be executed under legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law. Please get in touch with me through this email for more details.

Best regards.
Barrister Douglas James.
Email:douglasroyalchambers@yahoo.com

Well, I’m in the middle of FINALS! Exclamation mark is for the anticipation I have of going home on Thursday night (15hr Greyhound ride back to Toronto), but I use ! to emphasize the high degree of stress I’m under. My Systematic Theology I final went well this morning, but that was foreseeable considering I find it to be my strength.

Elementary Greek is killing me though. It’s kind of like cancer, in my humble opinion — it makes me lose hair, metaphorically speaking. I need to get 70% on the final, which is tomorrow/Tuesday morning @ 7am.

And then I have my New Testament I final at 3pm. Almost ready for that. But still, stressful.

Then I need to finish typing up / organizing my Journal for Personal Spiritual Disciplines, which needs to be handed in by Wednesday at 1:20pm.

After that, then I’ll be free. If Greek kills me, literally, I’ll either need to take the Greek Review in January, or take the class again in the Spring… I’m hoping for neither, but still I don’t think I know it all well enough. ~sighs~

In other news, I just received a Facebook message from a Chinese friend here at Southern, with an invitation to join him and some other guys in sharing an apartment that’s a 4min drive or 10min walk from campus. He says that rent should be cheap; $250 after utilities. I’m gonna talk to him about it soon, before I leave for Christmas…

There is some juicy debate on theology going on right now, while I’m studying for finals.

As I reported & commented on this issue in my previous post “Magnifying God in Christ“, Pastor John Piper has just responded to Ben Witherington with his own article, God’s Loving Self-Exaltation:

1. The explicit biblical textual foundation for Schreiner’s thesis is pervasive and overwhelming.
2. God’s exaltation of his own glory is not narcissistic but loving, because it directs our attention away from ourselves to the one glorious reality that can satisfy our souls forever.
3. God’s self-glorification is not the alternative to our glorification but the foundation and goal of it, as Schreiner will make plain.
4. The real cultural bondage today is not that too many people are making God radically God-centered, but that most people cannot conceive of his being loving unless he is man-centered.
5. To suggest that Tom Schreiner is “creating God in our own self-centered image” because he says, with the apostle Paul, that God saves us “for the praise of his glory” (Eph. 1:6, 12, 14) is less an indictment of Tom than of Ben.

Check out also Piper’s Biblical Texts to Show God’s Zeal for His Own Glory, in which he summarizes a few passages in support of God’s loving self-exaltation.

The much anticipated new studio album from Delirious? titled Kingdom of Comfort is slated for release April 1st of 2008.

In the meantime, the band is offering an exclusive FREE download of their song “God Is Smiling” from the new album right from their website. Visit www.delirious.co.uk/livingroom to sign up for the free download and also gain access to more exclusive content and secret tour info! Stay tuned to the website for info regarding the new upcoming album and tour dates!

(HT: WorshipTogether.com)

God magnifying himself through Jesus Christ by means of the Holy Spirit.

That is the underlying and over-arching theme of the New Testament, according to Tom Shreiner’s upcoming book, New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ.

However, in a recent blog post by Ben Witherington (Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary), he confesses that such a thesis about our Lord as a self-centered God is disturbing and “narcissistic”:

In other words I am arguing Christ, the perfect image of God’s character, reveals that God’s character is essentially other directed self-sacrificial love. God loves people, not merely as means to his own ends, but as ends in themselves.
[...]
Let me be clear that of course the Bible says it is our obligation to love, praise, and worship God, but this is a very different matter from the suggestion that God worships himself, is deeply worried about whether he has enough glory or not, and his deepest motivation for doing anything on earth is so that he can up his own glory quotient, or magnify and praise himself.

Denny Burk gives an appropriate, biblical response to Witherington’s narcissistic view of our self-centered God:

Everywhere the Bible teaches that God’s love and redemptive acts are designed to magnify His own glory (e.g., Exodus 9:16; 2 Samuel 7:26; Psalm 79:9; Isaiah 42:8; 48:9; Ezekiel 36:22, 32; John 17:5; Romans 9:17; 11:36; Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14). God’s love and God’s glory are not at odds, as John Piper would say. God’s love (manifested supremely in Jesus Christ crucified and raised for sinners) is a means by which His glory is manifested to the world. This is the common Arminian error. They mistakenly regard God’s means (His love and redemptive acts) as ends in themselves. But the Bible simply does not bear this out. The ultimate end or purpose of everything is God’s glory (see the texts cited above).

How typical of Witherington to say what he says, for when we remember that he’s an Arminian then it all makes sense!

In my own spiritual pilgrimage, I have been blessed by the ministry of Louie Giglio and John Piper. Through these men and their ministries, they have given us young evangelicals a God-centered theology through catch-phrases like “Yes Lord, walking in the way of Your truth we wait eagerly for You, for Your name and Your renown are the desire of our souls” and “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”

The interpretation of Scripture that I have learned and discerned from sitting under their teaching and then submitting myself to the study of God’s Word (especially in the Gospels and Paul’s letters) is that God does everything He does for the ultimate purpose of His glory, honor, and praise. As it says in Revelation 4:11, “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.“ He is rightfully self-centered and egotistical because He is God! (To do anything less than make everything about His own glory would make Himself out not to be God.)

I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.

Isaiah 42:8

And if He is LORD and Lord over all creation, should He not rightfully be completely self-centered? After all, if He is the greatest and most glorious thing in the world, should He not do all that He does for His own glory? If He loved us and gave His Son only for our sake as a means in and of itself, wouldn’t that make us a little bit more important than God Himself? Honestly, there are times when I wished that John 3:16 would say “For God so loved Himself” because somewhere in this world, some Christians and seminary professors have put themselves on a pedestal, thinking they are so important to God that you know what — He really should love them! This is a pitiful interpretation of Scripture and I am very saddened that such controversy arises even within biblical scholarship today

In short, Witherington’s own concluding paragraph works nicely when we consider him as the subject of it:

“I suppose we should not be surprised that in a culture and age of narcissism, we would recreate God in our own self-centered image, but it is surprising when we find orthodox Christians, and even careful scholars doing this.”

(HT: Justin Taylor)