StephenBarkley.com

Here’s another beautiful line from my Bultmann Commentary on the Letters of John:

For to love God and to be loved by him are a unity: the former is grounded in the latter.

image by Austin Moody

I don’t understand why people pray that other Christians would be anointed. I’ve led worship quite consistently for the last decade, and for some reason, “the anointing” people pray for is more important for musicians—at least that’s what I’ve been able to figure out. Everyone knows that while preachers need to be anointed, it’s the musicians who light it up (tongue firmly planted in cheek).

If you’ve prayed for someone to be anointed, don’t feel bad. I think I know what you’re trying to say. You’re asking God to let his servant feel his presence, right? That’s a great prayer, but it has nothing to do with being anointed.

TV shysters are particularly adept at throwing this word around. The picture above shows a good example of it. (By the way, if the anointing is the Holy Spirit, how is it possible to have 10 times infinity?) Read more

• The Burial of Jesus: History and Faith © 2008
• James F. McGrath (Exploring Our Matrix)
• 142 pages

You can’t use the right tools for the wrong job. You can’t open a paint can with a Phillips screwdriver, you can’t cut a steak with a butter knife, you can’t pull a shot of espresso in a percolator, and you can’t make historical claims about the bible using theological methods. That’s the most important thing I learned from this book.

Here’s my favourite quote, which summarizes the general perspective of the work:

Biblical Christianity . . . takes fully seriously the differences between Biblical writings and the development between them, rather than forcing their divergent perspectives into the idolatrous straightjacket of a doctrine of Biblical inerrancy. (139-40)

There are some words in that quote that will make a lot of believers uncomfortable. How can Biblical inerrancy be idolatrous? Read the book and and find out! (Here’s a hint: God is the only proper object of our faith.) Read more

I’m speaking on the Good Samaritan in a few weeks, so I started reading Snodgrass’s highly recommended Stories With Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus. Here’s a little something to ponder from the first chapter:

Stories are not inherently Christian and do not automatically convey truth. They can be used to communicate any religion, ideology, or even falsehood. Unfortunately, even good stories can be, and are, subverted to promote evil.

Last Sunday was one of the most important days of my life. My family and I spent the weekend in Bracebridge, speaking at Wellington Street Pentecostal Church.

Following the service, the congregation voted me in as their next pastor. Donna, Ryan and I can hardly wait to get started.

If you’re reading this from Bracebridge, thank you so much. You sure know how to make a pastor and his family feel welcome.

We’ll see you on November 2nd!

image by Julia Freeman-Woolpert

Halloween was highly controversial in Bible College. Half the school was hopped-up on Rebecca Brown and Chick Tracks, while the other half thought Halloween was all about cute kids and candy.

I found myself among the candy contingent. That explains why, in my third year of college, my friend and I dressed up like Kiss (including the face-makeup) and trick-or-treat-ed at my various professor’s houses to see what they thought about the whole night. It was an evening to remember (and yes, we did return with candy).

The problem with sensational media-driven events like Halloween, is that they make a caricature of evil. They give the Devil a red face, pointy horns, and a goat’s behind. Evil is portrayed as something so ridiculous, it can be ignored with a knowing smirk. Read more

• A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997
  © 1998
• Counterpoint
• 216 pages

This past summer I paddled the Missinaibi River from Missinaibi Lake to Mattice. In the evenings around the campfire, I would read a poem or two from this volume.

Berry’s a farmer from Kentucky, so it might seem odd that his poems felt appropriate in the Northern Ontario wilderness, but that’s what you get with Berry. He is so connected and intimately familiar with his location, his writing transcends that place and becomes universally applicable.

This book is organized chronologically, containing poems written between 1979 and 1997. The poems at the start of the book are profound. By the end of the book, they’re sublime. I’ll leave you with one of his shortest works to whet your appetite.

The seed is in the ground.
Now may we rest in hope
While darkness does it’s work.

While preparing a 1 John post, I came across a beautiful line by Bengel, translated from the Latin by Bultmann for his commentary:

Ubi non est amor, odium est: cor non est vacuum.

Where there is no love, there is hate; the heart is not empty.

(There’s gallery of pictures at the end of the post.)

I’ve hiked the LaCloche loop through Killarney twice now. The second time ’round, my friends and I had the energy to climb Silver Peak. After returning home and looking at the map, I realized that Silver Peak would make a good weekend trip. This past September, my dad and I spent a couple nights on David Lake, and climbed Silver Peak.

Read more

• The Devil and Miss Prym: A Novel of Temptation
  © 2000
• Harper Collins
• 205 pages

A stranger walks into an isolated village and offers unimaginable wealth to the villagers if someone is found murdered by the end of the week. What a great premise for a story! It’s sad that such an interesting idea came to such a lackluster end.

I suppose what bothered me the most is Coelho’s belief that humans have the unfettered ability to choose good over evil. (It doesn’t help that I’ve been reading Calvin’s Institutes concurrently!) Here’s the grand moral of the fable in Coelho’s words:

The stranger did not need Chantal to explain the story. Savin and Ahab had the same instincts–Good and Evil struggled in both of them, just as they did in every soul on the face of the earth. When Ahab realized that Savin was the same as he, he realized too that he was the same as Savin.

It was all a matter of control. And choice.

Nothing more and nothing less.

As a Christian, this sweet idealism bothers me. We humans are not free to choose between good and evil on our own. Apart from Jesus, we choose evil every single time! (Of course, it may not appear to be evil.) Morality is not just a matter of our control and choice. It’s a matter of handing control over to the Son of God who sets us free from our enslavement to evil so we have the ability to make an authentic choice.

Perhaps it’s my ideology that made this book so frustrating. It functions well as a nice morality fable. If you’re interested in real wisdom, though, search elsewhere.