Who does the church belong to?

Again and again I've heard Bruce Winter say,

“Don't you dare talk about your church.' It is not your church. It's not the elders' church. It is Jesus' church.”

He wants to make sure that young ministers (literal translation = servants!) don't start to slowly over time get the wrong idea about what church is. Church is the body of Christ, of which He is the head. (Ephesians 4:15-16) She is his bride, whom he bought for the princely sum of his blood. (Ephesians 1:7, 5:25-32) Even our individual bodies are not our own, but are rooms for Holy Spirit to live in and are owned by God. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

So, even my theology was perfect in theory, what's my actual manner of thinking about my church?

I don't always think of my head pastor as Jesus. I don't always preciously value each person as God's possession, for whom Jesus died and in whom Holy Spirit lives. I don't always recognise that my decisions and service aren't the final word, but what the sovereign Lord chooses to do through it is.

Are you like me sometimes?

Competitiveness and Scripture

For a little while now I've been thinking about a question: What does the Bible say about competitive sport?

A very difficult topic, because it doesn't say anything directly on the topic.

Thanks to Dave, I've recently read an essay on the topic which was quite helpful. It essentially saw sport as a neutral activity, but one in which it is very easy for sin to be masked as acceptable.

I'll be posting more on this as I work through it, but my current thought is about Sport as a revealer. I don't think that sport necessarily produces greater ungodliness, but is instead a revealer of ungodliness that is already there. In short, it reveals the person underneath.

This, however, can also be a beautiful thing when great sportsmanship and honourable play are demonstrated, or pursuit of excellence without cheating despite great pressure to do so. The high-emotion arena of sport is "a true revealer of character" as the great Stan Coombs once said.

What do you think about competitive sport, is it a good part of our created humanity? Or just pride dressed up in respectability?

Is everything? v1.3

I've decided that I'm going to reduce the scope of my claims. For now.

At this point I'm willing to assert that:

Everything has both existence and significance. When people confuse one for the other, or only see one of the two aspects of an entity, thinking becomes unclear.

In this schema, the 'existence' is what you might call the absolute aspect, while the significance is the relative aspect. As such, I'm trying to assert that both Arthur and Nathan are correct, and both incorrect. I think.

Less ambitious, and yet, perhaps still controversial?

Is everything? v1.2

Ok, so let's move away from ethics, which is not really the arena in which I want to develop this thought, but rather in the arena of ontology.

So, we have a vase. It is sitting on a table. Its existence and location is absolute. Yet, its significance is relative. Is it a Ming dynasty vase, or a cheap copy? The difference between the physical virtues of the two is negligible, but the significance is not.

Is the table able to take its weight? The significance of the objective existence of the book is entirely relative.

Or, perhaps, you could take words. A word on a page is a bunch of particles that absorb more light than the more reflective particles against which it is set. It's just ink blobs on a page. The significance of that word is, however, entirely contingent on whether there is a person standing and looking at it, whether they can speak the language and whether or not they know that the word is Bruce Winter's photocopy code.

On a note I think Arthur will like, I think that this type of thinking affirms the inherent, absolute value of things while acknowledging that all things occur within the context of a relational context created by God. I'm not sure that Platonism does justice to this, while Joyce Meyer gets closer to the Mark.

Is everything?

I've got a theory that I'm working on, and I'd like to throw it open to the general public to 'road-test' it, as it were. So this is one of those where I'd love some critique, feedback, etc.

Proposition:

Everything is both relative and absolute. The problem with much thinking is that it recognises the one and either ignores or denies the other.

Sounds profound, hey? But is it? *raised eyebrow*