AI: Alan Intelligence

Happy New Year!

Want a good New Year’s resolution? Read through the Bible in one year. For January 1: Genesis 1-3.

Full plan available here: http://traditores.org/in-one-year/

If anyone asks me to, I’ll post the Scripture reading each day. It’s really a small daily commitment that returns immeasurable treasure.

P.S. There is a good chance that when Steve Camp completes his current two month Bible reading plan and starts his next two month trek through all 66 that I’ll switch over to that. However, if anyone is actively walking with me in my year plan, I’ll keep with you.

P.P.S. That’s Gloria, if you were wondering. 🙂

(Cross-posted on my Nibbles Ninja and Traditores blogs.)

Happy New Year!

May 2023 be the best year ever for you and yours.

Right or wrong, illogical or not, New Year’s Day is a good time to make resolutions. Yeah, maybe it is an excuse to procrastinate (e.g. Why didn’t you start doing X or Y months ago?) Maybe we are setting ourselves up for failure (when we resolve to do something we’ve failed at before, e.g. a diet). Maybe we are just fooling ourselves.

But, isn’t it better than giving up?

Yes. It. is.

Assuming I’m correct, how should we choose what makes the list?

As 2022 came to a close, I realized that I have been prioritizing wrongly. That how my spend my time does not reflect what is really important. That modern blessings have become a curse.

As such, this year I have only two resolutions:

1. To love the Lord my God with all my heart and all of my soul and all of my mind
2. To love my neighbor as myself

(See Matthew 22:34-40.)

In the “Which are better, systems or goals?” debate, I would argue those are a system. I also have goals for 2023 (e.g. to slim down, to learn to play the keyboard, to become proficient with Python), but I intend to weigh how I spend what little time I have left on this earth by those two measures.

In line with #2, loving you as myself, I ask you to consider choosing the same two resolutions, definitely so if you are a Christian.

For the non-Christian, I would suggest that everybody worships something, whether we admit (or recognize) it or not, and that may mean it better you just have #2. If what you worship makes #2 impossible or difficult, then you are undeniably devoted to the wrong god.

For the Christian, if you live in a country like the United States, it is likely your blessings are a curse too. Yes, we are saved by grace through faith, not by our own works (Ephesians 2:8-9). However, the Lord our God makes it clear through His Word that “easy believism” is bogus and may instead indicate you don’t truly believe. (Take a look at the Epistle of James, John 14:15, and Luke 6:46 to start.)

A simple barometer of our faith is how we spend our “elective” time. Look at the things you do every day. Look at how much time you spend on each item.

Then ask yourself if you really put God first and love your neighbor as yourself…

…while thoughtfully considering the wise words of a non-Christian, physicist Richard Feynman: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Back to the non-Christian, please reconsider who you worship. I explain more on my Gospel Claims site.

To everyone, I truly wish the best this year for you and yours. At the end of my thought for todays, I end with, “I love you, see you again soon.” I come up short on loving you as myself…and I definitely come up short on putting God first. But, I am working on it and committed to those resolutions.

Will you join me?

P.S. In addition to the image above (full-sized version), feel free to use these two 2023 calendars to help remind you of what is really important: Continue reading “2023 New Year’s Resolutions”

Today’s Bible reading (2 Chronicles 12-34) had, within it, a study in contrasts.

First, a king of Judah dies:

18 After all this, the LORD afflicted Jehoram with an incurable disease of the bowels. 19 In the course of time, at the end of the second year, his bowels came out because of the disease, and he died in great pain. His people made no funeral fire in his honor, as they had for his predecessors.

20 Jehoram was thirty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years. He passed away, to no one’s regret, and was buried in the City of David, but not in the tombs of the kings (2 Chronicles 21:18–20, NIV).

Then, a few chapters later, a chief priest passes away:

15 Now Jehoiada was old and full of years, and he died at the age of a hundred and thirty. 16 He was buried with the kings in the City of David, because of the good he had done in Israel for God and his temple (2 Chronicles 24:15–16).

How do you want to be remembered?

(Cross-posted on my Traditores blog.)

Update: Video version…

Earlier today, Steve Camp tweeted this question:

To some fellow pastors: do you think training men for pastoral ministry is a matter of indoctrination or faithful discipleship? Ty…@JoshBuice @tomascol @Ken_FiveSolas @PastorMike @PastorKenTCAPP

— PastorSteveCamp (@PastorSJCamp) December 16, 2022

To some fellow pastors: do you think training men for pastoral ministry is a matter of indoctrination or faithful discipleship? Ty…

To which I responded…and he replied to me…

A bit… yes. But I sincerely would like others opinions on this.

I do have a reason for asking though that isn’t personally directed to any of these other men I tagged here.

Ty for your reply!

— PastorSteveCamp (@PastorSJCamp) December 16, 2022

Is this a rhetorical question Steve?

If not, I can ask Paul and Timothy about it. 🙂

(As luck would have it, my Bible reading for today was 1 Timothy.)

A bit… yes. But I sincerely would like others opinions on this.

I do have a reason for asking though that isn’t personally directed to any of these other men I tagged here.

Ty for your reply!

My asking if it was a rhetorical question reveals my view: Training men for pastoral ministry is a matter of faithful discipleship.

Why? First, many issues in the world are not because of faith, they are because of blind faith (which also exists outside of religion). Atheists may equate faith with blind faith, but are wrong. It is unconvincing to unbelievers, but Christians have ample evidence for what we believe.

Indoctrination relies on a heavy dose of blind faith, because indoctrination is impossible when people are truly allowed (and encouraged) to question what they are being taught.

Scripturally (and Scripture is a huge part of the “ample evidence” we Christians have), the first verses that came to mind after Steve’s tweet were Isaiah 1:18 and Acts 17:10-11:

18  “Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool (Isaiah 1:18, ESV).

10 The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. 11 Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so (Acts 17:10-11).

With the quote from Isaiah, a God that asks us to “reason together” with Him is not looking for indoctrination, He is looking for understanding. To use reason versus memorizing doctrines and rules.

As for the one from Acts, Paul was an Apostle. In our modern “trust the experts or you’re a conspiracy theorist” world, the Bereans would not have been commended for double-checking what Paul and Silas taught. However, the Holy Spirit led Luke to do exactly that to the “more noble” Bereans.

Even with trustworthy sources (to quote Ronald Reagan from another context), “Trust, but verify.”

Indoctrination demands you just trust.

Additionally, in the Bible we can see how indoctrination (versus discipleship) can lead to blindness…

39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life (John 5:39-40).

…and how the blind leading the blind (see Matthew 15:14) can have catastrophic, eternal effects:

15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves (Matthew 23:15).

Finally, the Scripture that stands out most for me about this subject is John 15:15, where Jesus tells His disciples:

15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.

We should all aspire to be servants of God, but this verse shows our Lord desires understanding, not blind faith. Yes, He wants us to do what we are told, but look at how Jesus trained His followers: He did not indoctrinate them, He faithfully discipled them by word and by action.

Thanks to that, the disciples grew from “Do you not yet understand?” (Mark 8:21b) to finally getting it, starting at the empty tomb:

8 Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead (John 20:8-9).

And then lighting the world on fire with the gospel!

P.S. The complete Twitter discussion as images:

Continue reading “Indoctrination or Faithful Discipleship?”