This morning in church I listened to Garnett Slatton talk about spending the morning with God — not in a time-consuming manner (since most of our time seems to be consumed with other things), but in a way in which we begin our day conversing with God. Hopefully by starting off the day with that conversation, we can keep it up throughout all that we do.

The “conversation with God” is another way of talking about prayer, which leads me to the question: what exactly is prayer? Is it simply a conversation between us and God? Is it us clearing our minds of our distractions in order to focus only on God, instead of on ourselves? Is it something sometimes, and something different other times?

I do believe that prayer is a conversation between God and me. I also have prayer before and felt like I heard nothing in response. That is not unusual. So when I feel like the conversation is more of a one-way thing, even when I am listening (since a typical response to this will be “you just must not be listening hard enough”), does that make the prayer less valuable? Perhaps my prayers will lead me to change. Certainly praying to God gets my mind off of my own selfish desires and onto him, and that’s important. Sometimes, though, I pray selfishly, focusing solely on my wants and needs, so what then?

Truly, the way prayer works is a deep mystery. Since we do not understand the connections that we have to God, how can we hope to understand how or even why prayer works?

Of course, that’s not to imply that we should not seek to understand what prayer is or how it works. In fact, I’ve included a little flash thing, below, to show you what others have had to say about the subject. And please chime in with a comment: what do you think prayer is? how do you think prayer works?

Will Evangelicals Help Save The Earth? runs the subheading of this story from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

It’s an interesting question, and the article/column is excited about a February ‘06 statement by Evangelical leaders called the “Evangelical Climate Initiative”, which you can read about at www.ChristiansandClimate.org.

In the Bible (Genesis 1), “God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” That was the first recorded command to humankind, right after God created and blessed them. (The second chapter of Genesis does give us the story of God’s command to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which may, chronologically have occurred first, but I mean, here, that it is not the first-mentioned command.)

Clearly God gave the authority to “fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion [...] over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Rather than see that as a blank check, however, I believe that the God-given authority comes with responsibility. We (human beings) are to responsibly exercise our dominion over this world.

I’m all for a healthy environment; I have/get to live here too. Perhaps the better question than, “Should I, as a Christian, be pro-environment?” is to ask, “How are we to care for this world that God has entrusted to us and balance that with being fruitful and multiplying?”

My brother (Ben) highlights a call in the Washington Post to stop stereotyping evangelical Christians. The Post column rightfully points out the role of Christians in the promotion of social justice, because of “a love for their neighbor.” It does sound like evangelicals are working to “save the earth.”
Social justice is not all that Christians are called to do, of course. There is Jesus’s essential call to “make disciples of all nations.” And I neglected to point out, above, that the human responsibility to manage the earth is truly a job of management. God does not say “the whole world is yours.” On the contrary, the Bible often says that the earth is the Lord’s. We are stewards.

Clearly, Christians should not and do not want to see the climate entrusted to them ruined. Perhaps that should be another reason to not stereotype. Not everyone agrees on how far or where to go in caring for the environment. But regardless of what we think about global warming, let’s ensure that we don’t forget about how we handle the gifts we have been given:

For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money. Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here I have made five talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here I have made two talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sowed and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ (Matthew 25:14-30)

The Wired News article, Battle of the New Atheism, is frightening to those of us who believe in the divine. I’m a Christian; I believe in God, in the need for all human beings to be redeemed, because we are all fatally sinful and in need of help, and in the sacrifice of Jesus as the way to get that help.

What some atheists desire, however, is for atheism to be the new religion — faith that there is no God. Since the freedom of religion is fine, that’s not scary by itself. Here are some of the scary points that show up in the article (mostly in its interviews and book quotations):

• You must be anti-reason and/or stupid to believe in God. As Richard Dawkins says, “Highly intelligent people are mostly atheists.”
• Belief in God should not be tolerated: “Dawkins does not merely disagree with religious myths. He disagrees with tolerating them.”
• Parents should not be allowed to teach their religious beliefs to their children, says Richard Dawkins: “It’s one thing to say people should be free to believe whatever they like, but should they be free to impose their beliefs on their children? Is there something to be said for society stepping in? What about bringing up children to believe manifest falsehoods?”
• Religious faith (a “supernatural crutch”) is a slippery slope, whose end is basically terrorism. “As Dawkins writes in The God Delusion, ‘As long as we accept the principle that religious faith must be respected simply because it is religious faith, it is hard to withhold respect from the faith of Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers.’”
• “[Sam] Harris argues that, ‘unless we renounce faith, religious violence will soon bring civilization to an end.’”
• Harris also tells the article’s author, “At some point, there is going to be enough pressure that it is just going to be too embarrassing to believe in God.”

After throwing all of that out there, the author, Gary Wolf, describes his visit to a “landmark of modern Christianity”, a “charismatic” church in Echo Park, California called Angelus Temple, which says on its web site that the renovation completed in 2002 includes “new cushioned theatre seats, Ferrari red carpet, modern stainless steel fixtures, acoustical absorbers hung decoratively from the ceiling similar to the Royal Albert Hall in England, a state of the art panoramic video screen [...]“, and so on. Wolf notes these church features before he describes the call to give money to the church. He seems to see all of the attendees as teenagers and writes the following:

The altar call is a moving spectacle, and even we adults, we readers of Dawkins and Harris, we practiced reasoners and sincere pilgrims on the path of nonbelief, may find something in it that makes sense. Notwithstanding the banality of the doctrine, its canned anecdotes, and its questionable fundraising, Pastor Matthew offers a gift to his flock. They sow their seeds [i.e., give money], and he blesses them. It is a direct exchange.

The “direct exchange” sounds very much like the awful medieval practice of the Roman Catholic Church called indulgences, which, for a time until 1567, were given as a sort of “Get out of jail free” card in exchange for money. The practice is wholly condemned today. But that may be part of the point of mentioning the “direct exchange”; Wolf also discusses the tendency of certain Christian individuals to be “personally wild and doctrinally flexible”. “The idea of bribing God is rank heresy — no trained theologian in any Christian tradition would endorse it. But such deviations are generously tolerated in practice.” Perhaps that it true in some circles, but I have not come into contact with them.

Wolf ends up moderating in the end. He says he has “decided to refuse the call [to] this prophetic attack on prophecy, this extremism in opposition to extremism.” Even though “everyone who does not join [the New Atheists] is an ally of the Taliban,” Wolf rejects those who would stamp out religion, choosing, instead, to stick to a more comfortable relativism: “no matter how confident we are in our beliefs, there’s always a chance we could turn out to be wrong.”

The conclusion highlights a basic difficulty in the argument of the “New Atheists”; they are choosing to believe in an absolute atheism. Their beliefs are informed by reason, sure, but so are mine. The difference is that I acknowledge that my belief is a combination of faith and reason. The two are not diametrically opposed. There is no slippery slope that causes you to fall into atheism when you start thinking logically.

What, I wonder, is the end of the chain of beliefs that start with this “New Atheism”? A distinction must be made between a totally intolerant extremism and a belief system that holds that some people are wrong, but that those people can insist, personally, on being wrong.

It’s bad news for a company when your board acts in a highly untrusting and unethical manner against other board members. Sounds to me like this company has some serious issues, the sort of issues that usually resonate from the top, down.

Read about the “Phone Scam” at HP here. I guess HP will need to revise the “Governance and ethics” part of their web site.

Leaders are supposed to lead with integrity, something that is far-too-often lacking in American culture (corporate and otherwise).

I actually saw a couple minutes of a recent episode of the TV show, Big Brother: All Stars. “ICK” was my primary reaction to the show. I was reminded of why I rarely watch television. The guy named Will was in a relationship with a woman on the show to try to get himself to the top. He admits this, referring to the relationship as something along the lines of a “faux-lationship”. You can actually watch the show at CBS.com, not that I’m promoting it or anything; in fact, you’d be fine just taking my word for it.

The sad thing is that many people consider it normal to deceive others to get what they want and fulfull their ambitions, if it’s necessary. What’s expedient so often replaces what’s helpful and what will build up others. The problem with today’s culture is that there is little perceived need to be helpful; little perceived need to build up others. Selfishness abounds due to the common belief in the importance of self-happiness and to the desire to make oneself happy.

Ask most American’s what their greatest desire in life is, and they will answer: “To be happy.” That is normal, even for Christians, who so often set themselves apart as holier-than-thou because of the issues for which they choose to fight. The issues, however, are not as important as the people, and this is frequently lost sight of by American Christians in the current politicized environment.

The Bible provides these pertinent remarks:

“All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor. (ESV).

A great chasm exists between what I can do and what I ought do. American culture lives in the space between those two ends. The understanding that there is an “ought do” still exists in the back of our collective mind, and that end pulls us away from living at the “can do” — but only so long as the “I need to be happy” mentality does not enter the picture. At that point, whatever I can do (to be happy) is what I should do.

An understanding of the gross inadequacy of living to be individually happy, at the expense of whatever needs to be expensed, means focusing not on issues, but on other people. This culturally antithetic outlook is one that Christians, at least, should adopt “for the glory of God.“