charlieDEAN’S Blog

I have a couple friends who like to ready heady stuff and get together and discuss, so Sunday evening we got together and discussed N.T. Wright’s book Paul: in fresh perspective.

I think we all had the sense that if we were up-to-date with the latest theological discussions of Paul, we would have felt like we knew more about what he was talking about.  Nevertheless, it was a valuable read.  Here are some of the takeaways for me:

• Great reminder of Paul’s “Jewishness.”  Oftentimes, in our modern exegesis, it’s easy to slip and to start assuming that N.T. writers think like we do about the world.  Wright’s reminder of the three worlds of Paul (Jewish, Hellenistic & Roman) as well as the primary focuses of 2nd Temple Judaic thought (Covenant, Creation & Apocalyptic) was very helpful to me.
• I found the last chapter “Jesus, Paul and the Task of the Church,” to be my favorite as one of Wright’s primary purposes was to consider the relationship between what Jesus taught and what Paul taught.  He mostly talked about their differing mission & audience that leads to different emphases and different ways of saying things.
• I liked Wrights discussion, under the heading “Conclusion: Paul and the Task of the Church,” as he talked about understanding the church to be part of a large play, in which we are the fifth act.  Here’s a quotation:
  • “I believe it is part of the task of the church today to accept the postmodern critique of modernity but to insist that it is not the last word…I believe that part of the task of the church in our own day is to pioneer a way through postmodernity and out the other side, not back to modernity in its various, even in its Christian, guises, but into a new world, a new culture, which nobody else is shaping and which we have a chance to.”

Okay…there was lots of stuff that I could have written about…I’ll just say…if you consider yourself a “closet theologian,” you need to read this book.

Here’s Madox (10 wks old) with his cousin Lauryn (2 wks old).  I’m so glad that even though Jennifer and I seem incapable of having girls (yes, I know that it’s all my fault), they have cousins who are close to their age.

Of all the branches of theology, eschatology — the study of “last things” — is probably my least favorite.  I know, I know, most people love it — with the “bowls” and “trumpets” and 70 weeks, and so on.

However, it’s my least favorite, because I see it as oftentimes a lot of guessing — and people getting fired up and dogmatic about things that, in my opinion, are hard to understand and would therefore demand less dogmatism and a higher degree of awareness to one’s own fallibility.

So I picked up Joel Rosenberg’s book Epicenter, with a fair amount of skepticism.  But I was pleasantly suprised.  Instead of a Left Behind-type book that seems to revel in specificity, Rosenberg carefully exegetes Ezekiel 38-39, and suggests that as we consider the present Middle-East situation, that we view things through what he calls the “third lense” of what Scripture says about the Middle East (the first two lenses are politics & economics).

Anyway…good read — challenged me to think Biblically about Iraq, Iran, Israel, Russia et al.

disclaimer: this is not a place to argue harry potter — if you are of the opinion that Christians shoudn’t engage with contemporary culture, that’s fine, but I’m not going to engage in that debate…
My predictions for the seventh and final harry potter book — the deathly hallows.  In June, I re-read the first six books and therfore offer the following predictions.

 1.  I’m going to go against the trend and say that Harry WILL NOT die.  Offing the title character seems a bit too heavy and too big of a downer…imagine the Lord of the Rings if Frodo throws himself into the fire…while some might like that, the mass populace would revolt — can you imagine the 13-year old girls who will cry and cry and never pick up the book again?  Happy endings sell books!

 2.  Hogwarts is in session.  I know that it was hinted in the last book that school would be closed…but I refuse to believe it.  How do you have an HP book without all the teachers, and the castle.  Hogwarts, and everything that comes with it — ghosts, houses, pictures, the quidditch fied, the Forbidden Forest — has become a central character that MUST be part of the final book.

 3.  Dumbledore is DEAD — no return for him!

 4.  Snape is GOOD!  One of the themes of all the books so far has been that one of the things that marks someone as “good” is their belief in redemption.  If Snape is really under V-v-v-v-v-voldemort’s command, then the implied principle is that people don’t deserve second chances, which would be completely inconsistent with the previous six books.  You might as well have Hagrid start killing all non-Giants!

 5.  Ron & Hermione stay hooked up.  Harry & Ginny end up together…this is the romantic in me, hoping desperately that it’s true.

 6.  Draco Malfoy sees the error of his ways and at a strategic juncture chooses to help Harry defeat V-v-v-v-voldemort.

 7.  Headmaster, for year seven: I don’t know…I want to say McGonagall, but that seems a little too obvious.  My gut says a new character…maybe Dumbledore’s brother??
Please give us your thoughts..I’m curious — although please don’t spoil it, once you’ve read the book…I have to allow my wife to read it first, so it might be a couple of days before I get to it!!

Big stuff going on at church that I can’t/don’t really want to get into except to say that I think living wisely is hard work.  It’s a minute-by-minute decision to not rush to judgment, to gaurd my tongue and to be gracious, forgiving, and gentle with people.

But this is where the rubber hits the road in terms of maturity and wisdom — how you respond in pressure situation — it’s where you can really evaluate the people around you.

If you know the specifics of the situation that I’m talking about, please be extremely careful making comments here — once you post something, you can’t really get it back.

I spoke this past weekend at Northwoods in our continuing series: Real Heroes.  My topic was “unassuming heroes” and I was talking about Deborah (Judges 4) — I used the title “backstage heroes.”

So, let me flip to the other side and talk about the spotlight for a second.  I think it’s possible (and healthy) — if you’re a person who is often in the spotlight, to figure out how to have a backstage attitude.

Some of my personal strategies for developing a backstage attitude are (I’m far from perfect, but these are some of the things that I try to do):

• to make sure that I get my hands dirty as much as possible — intentionally try to do things that other people won’t notice
• to — as much as possible — ignore my press.  Someone very wise once told me, that you’re never as good as people say, and you’re never as bad as people say either.”
• refuse to self-promote

On Friday, a childhood friend found Northwoods and dropped in for a surprise visit.  It was so good to connect.  He reads this blog and occasionally emails me, but we haven’t seen each other for probably 10 years.  It was great to catch-up on people we knew from Glasford and talk about the Cubs.  Actually I have to give Tim credit for turning me on to the Cubs when I was a kid — in the era of Sandburg, Cey, Sutcliffe, Dawson, Dunston, et. al.  

Anyways…it’s great running into childhood friends!!

Somedays it feels like you’re living in a surreal dream.  The other day I had this overwhelming sense of this idea that my life is idyllic in so many ways…here are some of the triggers:

• t-ball season is over…but I gotta say, there is nothing more “americana” than playing t-ball in kickapoo next to the catholic church with an ice-cream shop across the street and american flags surrounding the two baseball diamonds.
• the smell of corn fields after the rain
• 3 4th of July parties…THREE! (Still tired and recovering!)
• spending my days off in the pool with my boys laughing and wrestling!
• golfing with my brother again — he just moved back too tht earea for the first time in almost 8 years.

Life is good.  God is good.

I’m insanely competitive.  Most of the time I do my best to tame the competetive monster inside of me and I pretend to be a gracious loser.  But really, I hate losing.  So, I have to say, after losing 4 straight softball games, I’m humiliated.  Last night we lost to the worst team in the league, which now makes us the worst team in the league.

What’s most frustrating is our two wins came against the two best teams in the league…go figure!

Anyway, the height of humiliation was a fly ball in the infield last night that I called, and then saw our pitcher’s shadow and freaked out, thinking he was there and so I paused and it dropped…my first fielding error of the season and so shameful!